Halloween Party (Oct 31, 03)

My friend from E-band is performing in Cloud Nine for the Halloween Party, so we are all going there for fun. We haven't had parties for a while after summer and Halloween is kinda long waiting event as an excuse for party! The place is packed with all kinds of people, and as usual, tons of people are waiting downstairs hoping to get in for free (entrance was RMB 80 + one CD). They are using their mobiles to call "somebody" to come down to get them in. I don't know how many finally get in this way because I saw Youdai (one of the owners) stopped in the middle of the staircase after seeing almost 30 people downstairs are waiting for him (the "somebody"). I think he doesn't want to come down at all. I sometimes wonder how much money they can actually make from this kind of culture.

The Collection of Architecture (Oct 25, 03)

Today, a friend who loves architecture appreciation invited me to visit the Commune by the Great Wall. This is an architecture project involving 12 world-renowned Asian architects designing 12 unique villas as a collection for the owner of that piece of land. If not for my friend, I wouldn't know there is a project like this in Beijing.

The project is impressive and the villas are interesting too. With all these modern architectures right under the Great Wall, it just gives me a very strange feeling, modern vs. ancient, commercial property development vs. history relics.

Beijing Hotpot (Oct 23, 03)

I went out to try a new hotpot place tonight. The weather is getting colder and colder as moving into winter time. The colder the weather, the more the hotpot, and the more the spicy food too. Actually, my body has been sending out signals that I should stop this diet.

My mouth has this huge crack on it (it's really on the skin around the mouth muscle, not inside the mouth) for a couple of weeks now and it just won't go away. Now it came to the point that I find it really painful even just to open my mouth. I have put on different types of gel as advised by the doctor but not much progress. I finally went to visit a Chinese herbalist. This very very old doctor looked at my tongue, touched my pulse, without asking questions, he said,"You should stop eating any spicy food, then take the Chinese medicine and it will be fine soon." I told the doctor," But my stomach is ok, I don't have any problem with spicy food!", he replied,"You have a southern body nature which is not used to dry weather and spicy food, even your stomach is ok, it doesn't mean your whole body is ok, it takes years for people to full adapt to Northern food and weather." "oh....no....I love spicy food....."

After this, I wonder how long will it take for me to be totally adapted to the northern environment? or can I really become part of the North?

北京火花特别多 (Oct 20, 03)

今天晚上跟萌萌和她的朋友去了一家新开的夜店叫"九霄"(Cloud Nine)。很大的地方，其中一间房间里面有几台桌球，于是友人们建议打桌球。我没有学过打桌球，而且物理科很差的原因所以真的学不会。我建议他们打我在旁看好了。但是萌萌和她的友人很热情，尽管我会拖慢他们的进度，他们还是很有耐性的教我。

从来了北京到现在实在尝试了很多在香港没有机会做的事情。朋友跟我说，北京有七成的人口都是外地人口（从其他省份或国家来的），所以特别愿意互相照顾，也愿意多交不同的朋友。我觉得这种气氛真的跟香港很不一样，也因为如此，我才有机会尝到不同的事情。 另外一位C友人也曾经这样跟我说，“你知道吗？北京的天气特别干，尤其对你们南方人来说更是了，在干燥的天气，人和人的相处也会产生特别多的火花，有些火花没几天就可以灭了，有些可能会特别长，有一些搞不好就成了大火，所以你要小心啊！”

我当时在想，原来北京的火花特别多，那还是多喝老火汤滋润一下好了！：）

Shenzhou No. 5 (Oct 19, 03)

Hurray to the Shenzhou No.5! The media in China have bombarded (or celebrated?) the whole country the whole week with the news of the first successful mission possible in the space. Nothing should be said more as all kinds of knowledge about space and astronauts have been revealed by the rigorous media coverage. But, Chinese are quick! Why? Today when I walked in the Xinhua Bookstore in Wang Fu Jing, the counter at the front gate was selling all kinds of Shenzhou No. 5 models already! Different models including a special edition with gold plated spaceship skin and a crystal-like material as the earth! Then as I walked in further into the store, the new book section, as you can probably imagine, was showing ALL-KIND-OF books about astronomy, the rise and downfall of space industry, ………… basically, you can name it and you can find it. It’s indeed incredible!

Living Together (Oct 18, 03)

I went to Matt and Na’s home party tonight. Matt and Na are not married, nor in boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, they are only flat-mates. It’s not common in HK to have opposite sex as flat-mates. Speaking of this, I found that Beijingers are generally more open towards boys and girls relationship than HKers. This reminds me of the Sex and the City Beijing versions that my girlfriends and I once talked about. We were joking that stories we encountered or heard in Beijing are good enough to make a Sex and the City Beijing version series, the difference though, probably that our series would be far more conservation that the US one. As such, it won’t meet the audience’s expectation.

The Changing Houhai (Oct 16, 03)

During the SARS period, Beijing was very quiet, like all other affected cities, most of the public areas are closed, everyone in Beijing lock themselves up in their home and no one would walk around in the city. Houhai was my favorite place at that time for running. My friends and I would follow the lake shape to run for hours there. It was a good way to keep our immune system strong.

A few months after SARS, I visited Houhai again, the area is definitely more flourish than before. There is a new area developed, called “Lotus Lane”, I remember one of the hidden café here used to be my favorite reading place. I would bring along a book, order a cup of coffee and then sit here to read from the afternoon till sunset. Then watch the sunset from the window, till it finally disappeared behind the lake. Now that all these scenes are gone, instead, we have a lot of restaurants and bars along the Lotus Lane. Beer sign and Christmas lights are everywhere (even it’s not Christmas yet). I can tell Houhai is a good place for restaurant business with such scenic environment, but is it necessary to have so many? Maybe this is like what my friend said, “The characteristic of China business is that people will copy it to everywhere to the point that the business is no longer sustainable.” Maybe this is true, very true.

Business Negotiation in China (Oct 12, 03)

On the way back from a business meeting with an international client, my local colleague is giving me a lecture on how to do business negotiation with Chinese clients. He said it works very differently from western business culture. For Chinese companies, you always work for free or give them for free in the first negotiation, then they will regard you as buddy and you will get more paid deals or order from them afterwards. While he observed that western companies don’t do the same. Discount only comes in when a long term relationship is built. I am not sure if this is true to all the companies but at least quite true to the industry I am in.

Grade A in the Silk Market (Oct 13, 03)

Guess where I was during my lunch hour? I was at the most popular shopping place for foreigners. It was my first time seriously to visit this famous market where a lot of “Grade A” stuffs were sold. Indeed, this marketplace is quite unique in Beijing. Shops are obviously selling over-priced fake stuffs and they customers know that too, however, it seems both parties enjoy this kind of trading method a lot. I was with my foreign clients and this is the only free time that they can have in Beijing, instead of visiting other tourist places, they chose to spend their only free time here. It’s amazing.

After almost an hour bargaining, the price was cut to half, and it seems, both the shop keeper and the client are very happy about this result. Not mentioning the time cost of doing this over a few hundred RMB goods, I guess the satisfaction from cutting down half of the price overwhelmed everything.

Visiting a Colleague’s New Home (Oct 12, 03)

Being in Beijing for more than a year, local colleagues seldom organized home gathering. We always eat out or go for picnic but never a home gathering.

This Saturday, one of my colleagues bought a new apartment and invited all of us to visit her home. It’s a newly developed community next to the forth ring road, a 150sqm, 2-bedroom apartment with spacious dining and living room. Newly furnished with modern deco, next to the entrance, was a specially made “tea room” because the couple likes to drink tea. This is my very first experience to visit a local colleague’s new home and it helped me to learn more about the local life. Even this colleague has already have a new and spacious home (to most of the HKers), she still wants to buy a bigger one if she can. She is now studying for other professional examination for further qualification.

In fact, this is a typical young working class in Beijing, since I am in the technology industry, everyday when I walk by the desks of the local colleagues, there are always tens of books on it. They are always studying, especially the technical people. This is quite different from the people in HK indeed. Sometimes, I feel that local colleagues in Beijing are far more competitive than those in HK, in fact, Beijing colleagues seldom work long hours, but they tend to study and equip themselves whenever they can. There is always this question in my mind, “When would HK people lose their edge in mainland?” I, of course, don’t know the answer yet, but all I can say is that I am quite happy to compete with ones who are capable and energetic.