Sprained Ankle

Recently I have been playing basketball with some of the guys from my office. It's been good to get a little exercise and get back into playing some ball from time to time. Chinese people have a growing passion for basketball and some of the guys I play with can play pretty well. The only big aspect of the game that seems to be missing when we play is any kind of cohesive team play. The games mostly alternate between one guy shooting up an outside shot or another guy driving to the basket as close as possible then throwing it up. I rarely see people trying to work it into the middle, doing pick and rolls, driving it and then kicking the ball out, or anything like that. I guess that kind of stuff might take longer to develop than some of the other fundamentals like shooting. Maybe I'm just overestimating the type of play that should be going on for just a pickup game, though. Another thing I have noticed is that pretty much no one will shoot threes, which in the past few years has pretty much been my specialty. It's good, though, because it has forced me to change the way I play and try to drive to the basket more often.

I had been playing fairly regularly until a few weeks ago. One night when we were playing, I jumped up for a rebound and landed on someone's foot coming down and sprained my ankle pretty bad. I've had a lot of sprained ankles in the past from playing basketball. Maybe I just have weak ankles or something. After I sprained my ankle, all the guys I was playing with wanted me to sit down and take off my shoe, but from my experience I knew that if I did that my ankle would swell up big time and I would be in trouble. I figured that I could just walk around for a little while and keep the ankle loose and shake it off as I have done a lot of times before. However, after a few minutes, I could tell that this one was more serious. I made the thirty minute bike ride back home from the gym and my ankle felt ok during the ride, so I thought that maybe I was going to be all right, but the longer I waited, the more tight and swollen it got.

Ankle on the Night of Sprain

Ankle on the Night of Sprain

The next morning when I woke up, my ankle was extremely sore and I could barely put any weight on it. Since I live on the sixth floor of my apartment building and there are no elevators, I couldn't imagine going down all those stairs and then either riding my bike or walking to work like I normally do, so I had to stay home.

Ankle the Next Morning

Slowly my ankle was getting more and more swollen and it was starting to bruise up a lot, especially in the area just below the ankle. It was a bit funny because in the beginning when it hurt the most it wasn't really too swollen and didn't have any bruising. After the one day resting at home, I was able to walk ok and went to work the next day. When I showed my coworkers my ankle, they thought it looked so bad and I had to convince them that it was actually feeling much better. A lot of them told me I should see a doctor and spray some medicine on my ankle, which would definitely be the Chinese solution. I didn't think it was worth it to try to convince them that it is impossible to heal an internal injury by spraying some medicine on the external surface, but who knows, maybe the placebo could work if I just believe it to be true.

Beginning of Bruising

The Fattening of the Foot Bruising in Full Swing

It was a bad time to injure my foot like that because I had a friend coming to visit me in China and we were planning to hike Yellow Mountain, not to mention all the walking around you normally do when traveling around. I had about one week to rest before he was coming, so I tried to sit with my foot up and ice it as much as possible. By the time he arrived, I was able to hobble around pretty well and I made us ride bikes the first weekend since that was a lot easier for me to get around. After that I had another week to rest before we hiked Yellow Mountain and by then I was feeling much better. My ankle felt pretty strong while we were hiking, although it was pretty sore by the time we had finished on the second day.

Fat Foot

Bruising All the Way Up to My Toes

It has been about a month since I first injured my ankle and to be honest, it's still not 100% healed. This is definitely one of the worse ankle sprains I've ever had. Normally, when I was younger, I would always heal up after a few days or a week, but this one is taking much longer. Maybe the injury itself was much worse or maybe it is just that I'm getting older or not in as good of shape as I once was. Either way, I'll be a lot happier when it's back to normal and I can get back to playing basketball and other stuff with no pain.

Here are a few more pics if you want to see my bruised foot in higher resolution: http://picasaweb.google.com/wallred10/SprainedAnkle

Solar Eclipse in Hangzhou on July 22, 2009

It has been quite awhile since I have updated the old blog, but it hasn't necessarily been from lack of material, although I have been traveling less lately. The main reason is that the blogspot website has been blocked in China for the past few months. Not just blogspot, but also youtube, facebook, twitter, picasa and many others of the best sites to waste your time on. It's been pretty brutal not being able to update my every thought on these sites at all times, but I've been able to manage. I have found a bit of a back door to access my blog, so I'm going to try and start posting again. I should note that the speed of access is extremely slow, which is liable to make my head explode when uploading pictures, so savor every word of this blog as if it were a fine wine. Not too much has changed since my last post. I'm still working at China Windey and things are going well. I do have a bit of a backlog of posts, so hopefully I can get caught up in the next few weeks. One of the best things that has happened recently was the solar eclipse. As part of my master plan in coming to China, I calculated that Hangzhou would be an ideal location to view the eclipse almost exactly one year after my arrival in China. Well, I wasn't actually that forward looking, but I was lucky enough to be in this part of the world for one of the longest full eclipses in supposedly about 300-400 years. The eclipse took place on a Tuesday morning. After waking up, I was pretty disappointed because it was an extremly hazy and overcast day, so I was worried that I wouldn't be able to see it very well. The eclipse was supposed to start around 9:30, so I went down to the ground level from my office to have a better view. I hadn't bought any special glasses to look at the eclipse because I didn't really trust buying glasses like that from the same street vendors who normally sell counterfeit clothing, shoes, sunglasses, and everything else. I imagined my retinas getting burned out from some shoddy counterfeit eclipse glasses.

I tried making one of the pinhole cameras to see the sun before the eclipse, but alas, a four year engineering degree seems worthless when constructing such an elaborate apparatus. Luckily, a nice guy let me use his glasses and you could see the sun being partially blocked out by the moon. Without the glasses, I took some quick glances to the sun and you couldn't see this partial blocking with the naked eye. However, the best part of the eclipse, the totality, you don't need glasses for, so it wasn't that big of a deal that I couldn't see that well. Despite some warnings that the brightness of the eclipse would ruin my camera lens, I took a few pictures before the eclipse.

People Waiting for the Eclipse

Sun and Haze Before Eclipse

Close Up of Sun Before Eclipse

The eclipse started at about 9:34 and lasted until about 9:40. I didn't quite know what to expect, but I have to say that it was really amazing to experience. It started to get dark slowly at first, then before you knew it, the sky was completely dark as night. It was even possible to see stars in the sky. The moon blocked out the sun almost completely except for an outer ring of light. While looking at the eclipse, I thought that primitive man would have surely seen such an inexplicable event as a sign of the times or as some foreboding occurrence. Complete darkness in the morning doesn't happen every day after all. Nowadays, scientists can calculate within seconds when and where the eclipse will occur, but that doesn't take away the awe of seeing one in person.

Here are some pictures of the solar eclipse and the totality, where the moon is completely blocking out the sun. I included some classy pictures of my watch to show the times as well.

Before Eclipse: 9:33

Beginning of Eclipse The Totality

During Eclipse (tough to see): 9:37

Darkness at the Office During Eclipse The Last Seconds of the Totality

Unfortunately, all good things must end and right on time, it started to get bright again and then it was just like normal daytime. Since it happened so quickly, it almost made me wonder if I had really seen what I just saw. As soon as the moon wasn't completely blocking the sun, it looked like the full sun was shining, but if you had the special glasses you would be able to see that the sun was just a sliver slowly getting larger.

After having such a surreal experience, it wasn't much fun to face the reality that I had to go back and sit at a desk in the office. Instead of working on some boring document, my basic instincts were telling me that I would be better off sacrificing some virgins to appease wrathful gods to avoid having such a punishment again in the future. I couldn't get anyone else to go along with that idea, so I had to go back to work.

End of Eclipse

After Eclipse: 9:41

This Guy Was Really There

I'm really happy that I got to see the solar eclipse. Since I'm kind of a nerd about space stuff, I quite enjoyed experiencing something like that firsthand. For a few more pics, check out picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/wallred10/HangzhouSolarEclipseJuly222009

Huangshan with China Windey

A few weekends ago, I went to Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) with my department from China Windey. I already went to Huangshan last September, http://wes-allred.blogspot.com/2008/09/huangshan-yellow-mountain.html but last time the views were not that clear and I figured it would be a good chance to go with my coworkers and get a different view of traveling in China. The biggest difference was that this time I would be going with a tour group, something that I previously avoided like the plague. Normally, tour groups are a little annoying to me when I've been traveling with a small group or alone. The tour groups are filled with gawking tourists wearing matching hats, clogging up walkways and blocking views, all while being led by a tour guide blabbering away on a small speakerphone creating a lot of noise in the tourist areas that might be better off with a sense of peace and respect for either the nature there or for the monuments of the past. When a bunch of groups get together in a small space, the noise and crowding reach critical mass and lead to an unpleasant experience. However, the tour groups are how the majority of Chinese people seem to travel, probably because they offer cheaper rates, similar to buying in bulk for a discount. The groups are just a fact of life in China and impossible to avoid. Soon, I would be joining their ranks. This trip would also be different from my first trip to Huangshan in that we would not stay the night at the top of the mountain, but instead we would go up and down in a single day. To do this, we had to stay the night in the city about one hour away from the mountain. We woke up really early to try to beat the crowds, but unfortunately a lot of other people had the same plan. Before when I went to Huangshan, we went during the week, so there weren't as many people there, but this time we went on the weekend and the crowds were huge. In order to see the mountain in a single day, we took the tram up to the top instead of hiking, but we still had to wait around one hour to take the tram because there were so many people. The good thing about this trip, though, was that the weather was perfect the day we went to the mountain, with the sky clear and temperature cool. However, I committed one of the most egregious errors I have ever done while traveling and forgot my camera battery in the charger at home. Since it's a special camera battery, I couldn't buy a replacement. So I only have a few pictures that my coworkers gave me from the trip. Too bad, but it was kind of nice to just sit back and enjoy the view without trying to take a bunch of pictures.

Wes at Huangshan with Tourist Hat

Huangshan

Despite the perfect chance to see great views, the tour group somewhat stifled our opportunity. Once we got to the top of the mountain, where some of the best views are, we only stayed about 15 minutes until the tour guide made us move on. I think we waited more time at one of the bathroom areas than at the top of the mountain, which I thought was pretty ridiculous. Since there were so many people at the top of the mountain, we didn't really get a chance to see everything that was there. That's another problem about going with a tour group. Even though you don't have to make the plans, reservations, or worry about the details of the trip, you can't control where you go, what you see, and how much time you spend at each site. I also like to do the research because then I tend to learn more about the place I'm going to and after the trip is over I'll remember more about the places I've been. Oh well, sometimes you just have to roll with it and enjoy the time. After our brief stay at the peak, we headed down the mountain and hiked the whole way down. All together, we were only on the mountain five or six hours and we finished by 2 pm. Lame. After our time at Huangshan, we did another one of the mandatory group tour activities, namely being herded around to several shops to buy tourist goods. The first place was a tea shop and they had a presentation and sampling of some of the local teas. Despite my initial reluctance to get sucked into any tourist trap and buy overpriced items, the prices for the tea were pretty good and I bought some of the red and green tea. I'm kind of a sucker for different kinds of tea and I always like to buy the local specialties when I'm traveling to new areas if the price is ok. During the presentation, they even made promises that if I combined the red tea 50/50 with beer, that it would get rid of my beer belly. Get rid of my beer belly by drinking beer? Now that sounds like a solution I can get on board with. The next place we went was basically a traditional medicine shop, except I suspect that this place sold mostly placebos. They had a poisonous snake in a cage and every hour for the presentations they rattle the snake's cage, pull it out, and smack it on the head so that it will shoot some venom into a cup of baiju, or the white/clear alcohol that is popular in China. They said that this combination was especially good for your health. They also claimed that the testicles of the snake had magical healing powers and when they displayed some during the presentation, there were more than a few people who rushed to the front to take a closer look. At one point, they even tried to sell some snake oil, but I remember the English phrase of "snake-oil salesman" and resisted buying anything at this shop. They even gave small massages with the snake-oil that produced a burning sensation, but that still did not persuade me. At the end of the day, we went to a historical street with a bunch of the typical tourist items for sell, such as scroll paintings, chopstick sets, tea accessories, and much more. The street itself was pretty cool with the old style building and street food vendors. The next day, we went to an ancient village nearby Huangshan called Hongcun. It is surrounded by a pool of water and is filled with small alleyways, buildings with elaborate interiors, and a lot of other interesting sites. Even though it was raining that day and it was pretty crowded, I thought the village was pretty cool.

Bridge and Water Around Village

Pond Inside Village

Old Buildings

Little Girl at Shop

Inside a Building

After the visit to the village, we headed back home. It was definitely an interesting experience going with the standard Chinese tour group to Huangshan, but I don't think I'll go with a tour group again any time soon. It's not really the sort of traveling that I like to do, although for some people it might work out. For those coming to China with limited time and no knowledge of the language, it could be a good option. Despite the hassle of the tour group, it was nice to spend some time outside of work with the people from my department and see Huangshan on a clear day. While I was pretty negative about the trip in this post, I was mostly just being sarcastic and I had a lot of fun hiking around, eating the meals, and seeing the tourist shops and presentations. Although I've already been to Huangshan twice, I might have to make one more trip to attempt to have a complete visit with good weather, a working camera, and plenty of time to see the sites. Hopefully, the third time will be the charm. While I don't have many pictures, I have posted those I have on picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/wallred10/HuangshanWithChinaWindey

Job at China Windey

It has been awhile since I wrote about my working situation here in China. For a long time, that was because there wasn't anything to write about, but recently it was because I wanted to make sure things were stabilized a little before I called any false alarms about finding a job. Since I have had several potential job offers that never quite worked out, this time I wanted to make sure it was actually going to happen. That way I would minimize the chances of making myself look quite the fool. Most people reading this blog will probably think that all I've been doing in China is traveling, but actually for the past two months I have been gainfully employed. Fortunately, after a long search, I finally found a job I liked in the renewable energy industry. The company's name is China Windey and they develop, manufacture, sale, and maintain wind turbines. I first found the company at the Sustainable Economy Expo in Hangzhou and interviewed with them clear back in December. It just so happens that the company is located right here in Hangzhou, so I didn't even have to move to a new city. For the most part, Windey is a pretty young company, mainly because the industry was small until recently and not many people have experience in the area. The building we are in is pretty modern and is in the middle of a science and technology park. One floor above us is the company Alibaba's headquarters, so there are some relatively well known companies in the area.

West Lake International Plaza of Science and Technology The Office

Although I was kind of trying to get out of the Information Technology type of work, my position here is IT related. However, it's a good chance for me to get some experience in the renewable energy industry and I can learn a lot besides IT work during my time here. My role is mostly working with the communication system between the turbines in the field and handling some of the data that is measured. Some of the work is pretty similar to what I did at Deloitte, but it's kind of like I've been promoted two levels and have more responsibility.

Windey R&D Center

I am the first foreigner (i.e. non-Chinese) person to work here, so that has made it interesting at times. The first day I started working, a lot of my coworkers seemed a little surprised and nervous to have me around, but now everyone is used to me being here. Everyone in my department has been really friendly to me and mostly things have been good working here. However, the bad part of being the first foreigner is that their HR department didn't have any experience in obtaining the work visa and progress has been slow on that front. Visa issues seem to have constantly given me trouble since I first arrived in China.

Science and Technology Plaza

It's been pretty interesting working at a Chinese company and there are definitely some differences, but for the most part everything is good. One of the funny things is that after lunch it's ok for people to take a 30 minute nap at their desk, so almost everyone is asleep during that time. During that time, I normally just waste some time on the internet or check the NBA game scores. I'm afraid that if I fall asleep I'll be out for two hours and wake up in a daze, wondering where I'm at. For the most part, the type of work I do on a day to day basis working for a Chinese company isn't that different than what I'd do working an American one. However, the overall goals of the company and the way they do business is definitely different. I'm still trying to figure some of the ins and outs, but hopefully after a year here, I will have a better understanding. There have been a few funny things that have happened to me at work. One day they were making some kind of a video for the company and had a film crew here. The film crew say that I was drinking some green tea and were saying, "look at him, he's drinking tea instead of coffee!" like it was some kind of abnormality. I think of lot of Chinese people just assume that all foreigners prefer the same thing. When they were doing the filming, they were definitely trying to showcase the foreigner and wanted to show me in a couple clips. For one, I had to sit down and pretend I was in a meeting discussing some kind of wind turbine blueprint that I had no idea about, but I was willing to sell out my credibility to appear in a few seconds of corporate film. Another time, I had to do the HR training that is required for new hires here. Of course it was all in Chinese and they were having everyone introduce themselves. When I stood up and said I could speak a little Chinese (in Chinese), I saw a sea of smiles appear on everyone's faces and they started applauding my crude introduction. A lot of Chinese people are surprised when foreigners can speak much Chinese. It's kind of funny because they will always apologize that their English is not very good, when in reality I am in China so I should be apologizing to them that my Chinese is not very good. The main bad part about working in a Chinese company, though, is that sometimes in meetings I'll be either lost in translation or just lost when they are discussing things in Chinese. Mostly it doesn't bother me, but if I ever have something really critical I need to know from a meeting, it could be a problem. Besides that, there are only small problems like the fact that there are only squatter toilets in the office, instead of the western-style sit down toilet. Normally I avoid the squatter toilet like the plague, but now sometimes I have no choice. Another thing is that they only have hot water in the office. In China you can't drink the tap water, so they often have these big machines that make hot water. In some offices they'll also have a water cooler like we have in the US, but our office doesn't have that. It's a little bit annoying now that it's getting warmer, since I all I have to drink is refreshing and delicious boiling hot water.

China Windey Office

Despite all the delay, I'm excited to be working in China and in the industry I wanted. With all the bad economic news and layoffs I hear about going on in the US, I feel lucky to be in the situation I am in. Now, if I could only get the coveted work visa I have been waiting on for so long.

Xitang

Xitang rough phonetic pronunciation (shee-tong) 

Chinese: 西塘; pinyin: Xītáng

I had the first Monday of April off from work for "Tomb Sweeping" day, which is a day for Chinese people to remember their ancestors. I was looking for places nearby Hangzhou to travel and I had decided to go to one of the water towns. A water town is normally an ancient town that is built around a series of canals with a lot of bridges and scenic views. There are a lot of famous places nearby, but some of the most famous are pretty touristy and would surely be packed to the brim during the holiday. After doing a little research, I decided that Xitang would be a good choice for authenticity and fewer crowds. Since most of the water towns are pretty small, we just did an overnight trip. Upon arriving at the bus station and seeing the mass of humanity there, I remembered my previous promise to myself to avoid traveling during the holidays, but it seems that is one of the lessons I have a hard time learning. Even when arriving in Xitang we could see that the prices were a bit inflated and there were a lot of people there. Since Xitang is quite small and not that developed, it's difficult to find a place to stay online and book before going there and a lot of places were full when we arrived. Luckily, we ran into a few young Chinese people who were looking for a place to stay as well and found a cheaper room just outside of the ancient river part of the city. Like all tourist places throughout China, you have to pay to enter the main site and then also pay again for some attractions within the main site. However, the Chinese people told us that it is possible to enter the river town for free after 4 pm and before 8 am, so we decided to wait until after 4 pm to go inside. The river town itself is all centered around the canals. There are ancient buildings and wooden walkways all around the city. Mostly there are little shops selling touristy stuff and small vendors with street food in the buildings, but many of the buildings also have beds where it's possible to spend the night.

Nice Bridge

Canal with Ancient Buildings

Canal

Wooden Walkway

Locals Making Some Snacks

It was fun to explore the side streets and try all the food. Most of the food was pretty tasty and we mostly ate street food for the dinner there. There weren't many foreigners in Xitang, but not many people staring or asking to take pictures, so there must be foreigners there somewhat often.

Side Street

Bridge

Bridge

Side Street with Shops

Wes Wildin' Out on Some Crawdad

Once it was dark, we wanted to do one of the boat rides along the canal. At night they have all the red lanterns lit up and the city is very picturesque. They have small boats that hold around 10 people and there will be a guy that will row you up and down the canals for about a half hour. It's pretty great and with a little bit of rain falling, I felt like I was in an old Chinese kung fu movie. That is until I saw the throngs of tourists hovering around the shops on the walkways. Since it was night time, a lot of the pictures didn't turn out that well, but a few look pretty good.

River at Night

River at Night

People on Walkways

Open Windows

Late Night Restaurant, or "Nighthawks" Painting, Chinese Style

The next morning we woke up early to enter the town before the 8 am deadline. It was not raining this day and the sun started peaking out early, which made for a new view of the river town.

Breakfast and Tea on Walkways

Wes and the Rising Sun

Canal and Sun Reflection

Something crazy to see while traveling in China is how even Chinese city dwellers will be surprised or interested about how some of the local Chinese people live. The disparity of lifestyles is just as great between the two groups of Chinese people sometimes as between some of us who grew up in the US or western countries and the local Chinese. It's impossible to guess what the locals think when another Chinese person will get up close to take a picture of them, like in the picture below. As a foreigner, I think we can only observe these things and can never really understand fully the dynamic between two people who are really so different, even though they are from the same country.

Old Local Man

We walked around the whole town again in the morning. Since the town is not very large, we had seen almost everything the night before, but it was nice to see it under the light of day with a little sunshine.

Boats Cruising Down Canal

Canal

Canal with Cherry Blossom Tree

Rooftops

Black and White

After spending the morning and lunchtime in the city, we decided to head back home. When we got to the bus station, we found out that there weren't any buses for several hours because all the earlier ones were sold out. To kill some time, we decided to go get a massage. Since it's a pretty small town, we figured the prices would be pretty cheap. When we found a place, it looked a little suspicious, since a lot of massage parlors double as brothels in China. However, the prices were indeed quite cheap, so we decided to try it out. They took us to a normal room and it was just a normal massage with no funny business. However, when we finished and went to go pay, they charged us double the prices they said beforehand and that were displayed out front. At first, we were refusing to pay and asking why they were charging more. They said that they had given us the special "massage" and that we should just pay it. Since we had gone in at the late afternoon, not many people were there, but now we saw some girls in fishnet stockings and some shady characters hanging around, so we could definitely tell this place was suspect. They started being more aggressive and yelling at us a little, so I finally said that let's just pay and get out of this dump. Right as I got the money out and slammed it on the counter, I instinctively put up my middle finger and flipped them all the bird right in their faces. I'm not normally one to get angry and haven't really done something like that before, but being frustrated in not being able to speak Chinese well enough to defend myself and them treating us that way really made me mad. I hadn't planned to do that at all, but just did it at the last second. I have to say it got my point across quite clearly. After we walked out, the boss came out of the shop and started yelling at us some more, but we just walked away. I have to say that I felt much better after flipping them the bird and I felt we came away on the winning team, haha. My friend said that I've been in China too long if I'm arguing so much about less than $10, but it was more the principle. For the most part, things like that don't happen too often in China, at least from my experience, but every once in awhile someone will try to take advantage of you like that. Later, when we went to the bus station, we had a really nice, humble Chinese guy come and try to speak English with us, which is always nice. It goes to show that for every bad experience you have, you have a few more good experiences with Chinese people being very friendly to you, so you have to keep that in perspective. I have to admit that now it's all over, it's more a funny story and it's funny how you might surprise yourself in certain situations. After all the side story, I'd say that Xitang is very pretty and there are a lot of beautiful things to see there. It's not so big, so you only need a day or two there, but if you want to see some ancient buildings, bridges, and local life, it's a good choice.

Xitang River Scene

As always, more pictures on picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/wallred10/Xitang#