Tuesday, March 03, 2009

King Kong

Wow, it’s been a shitload of time since I wrote anything.  It’s not that I’ve lost the passion for writing an online journal or anything, it’s just that everything I’ve been doing lately are things I’ve done in the past.  I go to Russian clubs.  I stay out until eight in the morning.  I go to a doctor who will write me a prescription for anything I want.  I get solicited by both hookers and Nigerian drug dealers in bars.  Same old same old, life in Beijing.

I do have one important development, though.  For a variety of reasons my company has decided not to renew my contract when it expires at the end of April.  When I am no longer employed there I will go into more detail, but suffice it to say that the separation was more or less amicable, no real hard feelings on either side as far as I can tell.  So this means the end of my time in China, unfortunately.

Or does it?

I’m headed to Hong Kong on Thursday night.  The original reason I was going was to start a corporation.  Let’s just say it’s for “tax reasons.” Being who I am I wanted an amusing name.  Basically I wanted something that sounded legitimate but was actually really offensive.  My friend Rob knocked it out of the fucking park on his first attempt:  “Pacific Rim Job Consulting.” (If you’re such a sheltered wallflower that you don’t know what a rimjob is, click here.) We even had a logo picked out, simply a picture of an eye but in brown ink, and the slogan, “Take it to the rim!” It was going to be my finest masterwork, an actual corporation registered in Hong Kong with the word “rimjob” in it.

Then I got an email.  I won’t go into detail yet, but I will say that an exciting job opportunity has popped up which may indeed keep me in China.  I have to meet with the man in question on Friday while I am in Hong Kong.  Details to follow as appropriate.  It does, unfortunately, mean that since my consulting corporation might actually be used as a consulting corporation having the word “rimjob” in the title might not be conducive to future profits.

Other than that I have some friends going with me to Hong Kong, so we’re going to party our balls off on Friday and Saturday nights down in Wanchai.  Wish me luck.  With California $42 billion in debt and our current president spending like there’s no fucking tomorrow the LAST country on the planet I want to move to right now is the United States.

Great place to visit but I sure as fuck don’t want to live there, at least not right now.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Gong Si

Things at work have sucked lately.  For some reason things have deteriorated lately between me and the other two lao wei in my office.  It’s just stress, but still.  The thing that sucks is that here in China I’m kinda trapped at this company because I’m under contract.  If I was in LA I’d be thinking, “Time to send out the old resume.  I don’t need this shit.” I don’t have that luxury here, so I have to go to work and grin and bear it.

It’ll pass, I’m sure, but the last few weeks have been a real pain in the ass.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

The Lungs of Laziness

Okay, so I initially went to the doctor on September 2.  Today is the 10th, I’ve been on sick leave since then.  I go back to the doctor on Friday, at which time he’ll decide whether I should go back to work the following week. 

Here’s the cool thing.  Monday the 15th is a national holiday, the Mid-Autumn Festival.  Then the week of September 29 to October 3 is a national holiday as well, National Day.  So assuming the doctor gives me a clean bill of health on Friday, which he may not since I’m still hacking up a pancreas every five minutes, the most I’ll work for the rest of the month is nine days.

Not too shabby.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Action, Not Words

One of my Chinese has gotten into the habit of coming into work every day with a little list of slang phrases which he then asks me to explain.  They come from a show on local TV called “Action English.” It takes lines and phrases from movies and translates them into English.  (I’m quite sure that the show got clearances to use those clips from their respective copyright holders.) At any rate, today one of the phrases he asked me was “a walking felony.” I said I’d never heard this phrase used before.  He was dumbstruck; after all, it had been on the show. 

I told him that I’d make a guess, that it was similar to the term “jailbait,” a word who’s meaning I then went on to explain.  A few minutes later I got online and Googled the phrase.  Though there are virtually no instances of it being used, I actually found one solid reference to it, ironically enough this short 2005 article in the NYT about the show “Action English.” Here’s the salient section.

Still, not everything seems to translate. Episode 61, for instance, wrestled with the term “walking felony,” excavated from the comedy “Legally Blonde.” In the movie, Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon), wearing a pink bunny outfit, sashays up to her ex-boyfriend at a party. On seeing her, he exclaims, “Wow, you look like a walking felony!”

The show rendered the phrase literally as “someone that is dangerous.” “Thank you,” she responds. “You’re so sweet.” Here’s hoping military negotiators weren’t watching.

So I wasn’t all that far off with my guess of “jailbait,” but that’s not really a phrase anyone uses.  Apparently the show is only about 10 minutes long, but they have four presenters, one of whom is an American living in America.  You’d almost think that with the number of slang phrases and words that are out there today they could pick one that people actually use.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Zzzzz…

Last night I had my first really decent night’s sleep in about five days.  I feel fantastic.  I’ll still probably be late to work, though.  I wouldn’t want to break with tradition.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Effing Funny

One of my coworkers, a Chinese guy who went to college in the US, then lived and worked there for a few years, just told me a hilarious story.  Apparently when he was in school he helped a Chinese friend come to America for a vacation, arranging hotels for him, since the friend didn’t speak very good English.  His friend’s family name was Fu. 

The friend gets to the hotel and in broken English says that he has a reservation.  “What’s your name, sir?”
“Fu.”
“And how do you spell that?”
“F-U.”

If you don’t get it, try saying it out loud.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Face Time

You’ve probably heard about the Japanese concept of “face.” Basically it’s like honor, your standing.  If you do someone an honor you give them face, and if they do something dishonorable they lose face.

China has the same concept.  And, like the Japanese, they are very cognizant of the junior man/senior man idea.  If the senior man does something for the junior man, then the junior man receives face.

As the senior man in my group, my employees always expect me to do things like walk through the door first.  If we’re coming back from lunch someone will almost always run ahead of me to open the door.  It’s not a “kissing up to the boss” thing, it’s their way of giving me face, of showing respect for my seniority.

I’ve started using this to my advantage.  I’ll make an effort to get to the door first, then I’ll hold it open and let all my employees go through before me.  Every single one of them will say “thank you” as they walk past.  Today was the birthday of a girl who works for me.  (I say “girl” because she just turned 22.  Christ I’m old.) Someone got her a birthday cake and we went into the conference room to cut it up.  She grabbed a knife and cut the cake into slices, then gave me the first piece.  I said, “No, you have the first piece, it’s your birthday.” She was adamant, as the senior man I was essentially entitled to the first piece of cake.  I knew if I insisted that she have it she would end up losing face, so I took it.

Her boyfriend came in to work a little while ago to pick her up for dinner.  He didn’t speak a lot of English, and I was introduced as the senior man.  A few minutes later he said, “Sir, may I have your business card?” I can’t imagine being called “sir” in that manner.  It’s not like a Denny’s waitress using sir and ma’am as a common courtesy, he sincerely called me “sir” as a sign of respect.

I also started a thing where every Friday I take the whole crew out for hot pot.  There’s eight of us total, and the bill for all of us to stuff ourselves is about $24.  This gives the crew a great deal of face, while at the same time reinforcing my position as the senior man.

It’s an odd system sometimes, but it works quite well.  These kids bust their asses for me, and it’s largely because of the face I give them.

Monday, February 04, 2008

Mindin’ Mah Bidness

For the sake of prudence and decorum, not to mention legality, I’ve state solely that I’ve got the ball rolling on setting up a nice little side business here.  Not bad for being in the country only three months, huh?  Already I’m starting up a little operation of my own.  It’s totally unrelated to my current “real” job, and it won’t bring in a ton of money, but it’ll sure bring in enough to make the endeavor worthwhile.  It’s based on an idea I had in about five seconds, where a lightbulb flashed on over my head.  A few phone calls later and wheels are in motion.

More details to come as it is reasonable to do so.  Suffice it to say that this identical idea in America would be scuttled in about five seconds due to lack of feasibility, whereas within one day we had a distribution pipeline in the works.  And, no, just in case you were leaning this way, it’s not drugs or anything illegal in any manner.  Totally above board.

China, the land of opportunity.  Wasn’t there another country that used to be called that?  Now I believe it’s called the “Land of Red Tape.”

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Screw This

I talk all the time on here about how Chinese, from a grammatical perspective, is quite a simple language, but it’s incredibly complicated when it comes to nuance.  All the Chinese who work for me take English classes, during the day we ask each other about the respective languages.  They help me with my Chinese, and I help them with their English.

One of my Chinese just asked me to explain the word “screw.” Now, think for a second, about how many different meanings and contexts there are for this word.  First, there’s the metal fastener that gets placed into wood via a turning mechanism.  Then there’s “screwed it up into a ball.” Then, of course, there’s the sexual connotation.  Then there’s “You got screwed,” meaning that you were taken advantage of.

I explained all these differences, and was asked if “I screwed up” was impolite to say.  No, I said, since the connotation was more from the image of someone screwing up a piece of paper than it was the sexual aspect.  “However,” I continued, “When someone says that they got screwed, that implies sex.”

Think about that one, too.  “I got screwed” can either mean that you were taken advantage of, or that a girl had sex with you. 

Eventually I got around to explaining the hierarchy of politeness when it comes to “I screwed up.”

1. “I messed up.” (I did something wrong.)
2. “I screwed up.” (I did something more wrong, increasing in severity.)
3. “I fucked up.” (I did something really wrong, the most severe and impolite.)

Then they asked what the difference was between “I screwed it up” and “I screwed up.” It took me a while to explain but they got it eventually.

Christ, it’s like learning Chinese.

Update: But wait, there’s more!  I was sitting here rocking out with my iPod listening to the band Stuck Mojo.  One of the girls who works for me asked what I was listening to, so I handed her the iPod and my headphones.  As she listened she looked at the face of the iPod, pointed to the words “Stuck Mojo” and said, “What does this mean?”

“Stuck” was relatively easy, there’s a direct Chinese translation.  But how the hell do you describe “mojo”?  “Magic” doesn’t work exactly because it implies trickery.  There’s no direct Chinese equivalent for “voodoo” either.  “Witchcraft” is close but not exactly right.  “Karma” came close, too.  But in Chinese, karma and witchcraft aren’t exactly related concepts, so I had to say that it was a combination of karma and witchcraft combined with fate, fortune, or doom.  Eventually, after about ten minutes, I explained that it was sort of like Harry Potter, where there is a spell which either helps you or harms you.  They finally got it.

Whew!

Friday, February 01, 2008

Beijing in Three Pages

We’re currently recruiting for one of the senior positions at our company, and many of the candidates have no international experience and are hesitant about moving here.  The HR department asked me to write up a little PDF they could send out to prospective candidates who have these types of questions.  Here’s what I wrote.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Wounded Knee

One of my Chinese employees is a curious little guy in his early 20s.  When you have Chinese who work among westerners the locals always choose a western name for themselves, usually something which sounds generally close to their actual given Chinese names.  This guy, for some reason, wanted to be called Seal.  I asked if he was a fan of the singer of the same name and he said he’d never heard of him.  I asked why he wanted to be called Seal and he said he didn’t really know why.

Thus he became Seal.

Seal is one of the weakest English speakers of our group, but his skills are definitely improving.  The one area he still has trouble with, however, is my name.  Lee.  He calls me “Nee.” Here’s the odd thing—as I’ve documented before, Lee is not only a Chinese word (lǐ, meaning “plum") it’s also one of the three most common names in China.  Probably 100,000,000 Chinese have this family name.  It’s not like my name is something confusing or difficult to say, but he still calls me Nee.

There’s a whiteboard on the wall behind me, and I use it to give lessons to my crew.  I had someone write the character for lǐ on the board, and wrote “How to say Lee’s name” above it.  He still calls me Nee.  Now nǐ is also a Chinese word, meaning “you.” So I had someone write the character for nǐ on the board next to the character for lǐ, then I drew a big “not” symbol over it.

I’m not offended or anything, I think this is hilarious. 

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Merry Fucking Christmas

What a wonderful, magical Christmas this was, full of joy and happiness.  My day started at 4am, when I woke up in my living room chair, where I had collapsed after work the night before.  I turned all the lights off, climbed into bed, and got four hours of restless sleep before I had to wake up and come in to work.  I’ve been sitting here all day, drinking gallons of coffee, trying to stay awake.  The project sucks, it’s 8:30 at night, and I don’t think I’m getting out of here any time soon. 

On the bright side, I should be dead in 30 or 40 years.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Down With the Sickness

This is too damn funny. 

If one of my Chinese crew is going to be late or out sick, they usually send me a text message.  One girl who works for me, about 22 and quite attractive, has been sick with the same stuff I have.  She was out yesterday, and this morning sent me a text message telling me that she had a fever and was going to stay home.  Her choice of words, however, was quite amusing.  Instead of “I have a fever” she wrote “Everywhere is hot in my body.”

The best part is that she sent the text message to everyone else in our department, so we were all laughing about it today.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Paymonth

As you know by now, you only get paid monthly in China.  Because of the move and everything, I just got paid for the first time in over three months.

“Word up, my niggaz!  Chairman Mizz-ao in the hizz-ouse!”

Friday, November 23, 2007

Your New Job

More than a few people have made only half-joking comments about how they wish they could find a job over here.  There are a number of employment websites dedicated to getting westerners to fill jobs in China.  Here’s just one, NewChinaCareer.

The beers are on me.

Oh, and one other thing.  Often times you can make a HUGE career jump by coming here.  If you’re a college graduate stuck in an entry-level job at some company you can come here and move right into middle management.  But there are pitfalls to watch out for.  If any of you get to a point where you’re seriously considering this let me know and i’ll fill you in.