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July 9, 2008

Gavin’s Adventures In Beijing, Day 4 & 5

(Sorry it's taking me so long to get to these entries; this being my first full week back at work, life's a bit hectic.)

More China notes:

• Thursday and Friday were both traditional work days, in the sense that I got up, brushed/showered/shaved/brokefast and then headed to the office. The fact that I was working from the Beijing office - rather than on West campus in Redmond - was not lost, exactly, but it didn't manifest itself very often - generally, only when I'd get away from my screen or campus. Seen one Microsoft office, seen most of 'em.
• (There's something surreal about being able to fly halfway around the world and live, essentially, as if you were still at home. Maybe Snow Crash is right, the future's just going to be a worldwide, smeared-out sameness.)
• Microsoft's Beijing office is pretty nice. It's a 6-story building, plus a sub-level; the main floor is for visitors (and has some additional retail tenants); the second floor on up is all for employees. The sublevel (the employees all call it "P1") is like a mini-mall for employees - a few food places (one of which serves a mean rice bowl), a health club (with swimming pool), a barbershop, that sort of thing. Convenient.
• After avoiding its deadly grasp for the past two days, jet lag finally stalked and caught me on Thursday afternoon. I was on deadline for a project (deliverable due 5 PM), cranking away, and suddenly just ... hit the wall. Brooke had it, too; I'm surprised we weren't drooling on ourselves. Walking around the halls seemed to help, but there wasn't enough Nescafe in the world to resuscitate me. I just had to hope for the second wind.
• Thursday dinner was a special treat - Peking duck. The restaurant was very high-end, very swanky, and dated from 1864; they even provided a 'certificate of authenticity' for the duck (now up on the wall of my office), which contained the duck's serial number (#77648, as in "we have served 77,648 ducks since we opened"). No fooling.
• Everyone here - on the street, in the office, in shops, taxis, etc. - is very friendly. A lot of people will immediately ask us where we're from, and many will try their English.
• (For some odd reason, they don't think two 6'+ pasty white-guy geeks look like natives.)
• Beijing weather is low-70s in the evening, mid-90s in the daytime. It's humid, too. It feels like Houston to me.
• There's an odd cultural thing I keep observing where people - friends - walk down the street holding hands. It's very common, and everyone seems to do it. One of my coworkers tells me that "it doens't mean what it means in the States", which makes me laugh.
• After dinner, four of us went out for a massage near our hotel. It was, without question, one of the best massages I have ever had in my life - one where they treat you like bread dough, pushing, pulling and dragging you into various shapes until you're just a puddle on the floor. The whole thing ran around 90 minutes, and cost about 90 Yuan (about $13) for each of us.
• One the way out, I asked one of my Beijing colleagues about the prices - and about the masseuses, all of whom were twentysomething women. He explained that each masseuse likely got 20 - 25 Yuan for each massage, and they probably did four or so per day. That may not seem like a lot to some (it didn't to me), but 80 - 100 Yuan a day is 400 - 500 a week, and 1600 - 2000 a month. In a town where ~900 Yuan/month is considered a good living wage (you can hire a combo cook/nanny/housekeeper for that), doing massage is considered a good job. And for many Chinese, it's incredibly attractive relative to staying in a village, where the prospects aren't nearly as bright - or the freedom as broad - as they are in the city.
• (I have to say, it's a little disconcerting to grok the economics of a place with such a huge labor pool, and such disparities between modern urban and old-country rural.)
• A lot of the city seems retrofitted - apartment buildings with AC systems bolted to the side of every unit, storefronts that are mostly facades against older buildings underneath. There's a citywide sensibility of re-use, of upgrade. It feels vaguely steampunk-ish. MAKE magazine would love this city.
• Friday was an early-morning arrival at the office (jet lag + more deliverables), and I got to walk the (semi-deserted) streets in the cool air. I was taken aback at how few people were out and about; Beijing is busy, full of people, and to see the place without too many bodies was jarring.
• Even at 6 AM, the city is covered in the same flat, fog-diffused light that you see at all hours. No variance at all.
• Microsoft Beijing cultural observation: the nighttime staff makes tea, using fresh leaves, and puts them in all the offices in these nifty glass carafes. It's delicious.
• 3:30 PM - Midway through a presentation, I do the jet-lag stall (it's 12:30 AM Pacific), and it's all I can do to keep focused. Following the preso, I begin mainlining Nescafe.
• Driving in Beijing is crazy. CRAZY. In the States, we tend to like our roads segmented - sidewalk, car lane, bike lane, crosswalk - each marked with its own line, its own rules, and we want our people to stay where they're supposed to be. Beijing is totally different. Nobody in Beijing gives a damn about lanes, lines, or anything else: cars mix with trucks mix with buses and pedestrians and cyclists and guys on mopeds and some other guy with a bicycle pulling a trailer with a 10 ft. x 10 ft. x 10 ft. bundle of empty plastic bottles he's taking to the recycler. People stroll out in the street when they want to, and, when confronted with the horn of an oncoming car/bus/etc. (moving at 20 - 25 mph, max), they pause, 2" from the side of the inbound vehicle, watch it slide by, and then continue.
• In its own way, it's actually beautiful. It makes me wonder, too, about throughput - is Beijing's road system packet-switched, compared to the circuit-switched system in the US? With so many people, maybe they need to work as packets to get anything done.
• American brands are everywhere. KFC is to the Beijing fast-food market what McDonald's is to the USA (but, it must be said, McDonald's is pretty commonplace). Wal-Mart is here. Bally Total Fitness is here. Starbucks is here. The list goes on.
• We close the evening - and the week - with karaoke (natch), at what is, easily, the nicest karaoke place on Earth. Private suites, leather couches, flatscreen monitors for the cheesy videos, great sound system, wireless mics, touch-screen jukebox, in-suite catering. Unbelievable. The place was busy, too - we walked down a couple long hallways of suites, each full of private parties.
• (Yes, Brooke and I sang - a little Tears for Fears, a little "Bust A Move", even "Never Gonna Give You Up". There are pictures. There is absolutely, positively no video or audio recording.)

(If you're interested, I've posted a number of pictures from the trip to my Flickr Photostream.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer at July 9, 2008 8:31 PM. Posted to MSFT | Travel.

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