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Some random thoughts from my first 48 hours:

Ø       I couldn’t find how to flush the toilet.  I figured there must be some sensor so I waved my hands around a ton with no luck.  I finally gave up.  Later in the day I happened to step on a silver button on the floor well away from the toilet and it magically flushed.  Never seen a set up like this.

Ø       Hotels around the world have much greater focus on energy conservation.  You have to plug your card into the wall for anything to work in the room.  There is a master switch for everything next to the bed which is pretty standard in this part of the world.  There is a small heater under the sink that heats the water on demand so no waste of trying to keep water hot.

Ø       There are so many people here and wages are so low that employee efficiency is not important.  Yesterday I saw a gang of about a dozen men trimming bushes by hand with tiny clippers.  In the US there would be one Mexican with some power clippers who could do the work they did in minutes compared to hours.  In my office there are dozens of women in uniforms on each floor who go around cleaning, bringing tea, etc.  I think my waste basket gets emptied 3 times a day.  There is a full time security guard on each floor in the office.  At the compound where we live they collect trash twice a day outside of the house.

Ø       I worked late on Friday and when I left at 9PM I would say the office was still about a third full.  We have meetings scheduled for Sunday.  These people work like mad.

Ø       Some of my favorite signs in the lunch room.  “Fizzwater bottles recycle, please replace to pantry room.”  “Office snack is forbidden to take away.”  “Please do not store your food in the fridge too long.  Ayi (maid) will dispose the rotten food away.”  “Office paper cups are for visitors and conference room only.  Staff are recommended to use their owner cup.”

Ø       The garbage disposal is called a “bone crusher”. 

Ø       Beer and soda cans alls have the pull top opening mechanism that we used to have in the States 20 years ago.  Will be interesting to see when/if they move to the pull tab that doesn’t separate from the can.

Ø       I have not seen the sun since I have been here.  It has been hazy and overcast since I arrived.  Hope this changes.  Supposedly it has been an unusually wet summer here.

Ø       At night a big truck goes around with big hoses and they hose down the trees along the streets.  Not sure what this is about.  Maybe they are trying to wash the dust off the trees so the trees don’t die?

Ø       What makes this such a vibrant city is the mixture of old and new, and rich and poor.  Next to our modern glittering office building is a small half block shanty town.  Any square inch in this town that is not covered with a skyscraper is occupied by some sort of squatter.  

Ø       People couldn’t be nicer here.  There is at least one place in the world where Americans aren’t hated.

Ø       The numbers 8 and 6 are considered lucky.  The numbers in your office phone extension are very significant and not random.  The head of Microsoft China has 8866.  They gave me 8860 which supposedly is a very impressive number.  On my first day they made a big production about how lucky I was to have this number.

Ø       In general prices here are about 1/3 to ½ of what they are in the US.  I’m staying in a very hotel and it is $87 a night.  In Manhattan it would be $300-400. 

Ø       Peaches are in season.  Everyone around town has a peach they are munching on.  The real estate agent gave me a half bushel of peaches.  I put most of them in the lunch room. 

More musings: 

An English name typically translates to 3 Mandarin characters.  Since there is no literal translation of names one can take great liberty in making up a Mandarin name.  The one my employees volunteered for me is 金伯樂.  You might not be able to read it unless you have the Mandarin character set loaded on your computer.  The first character means metal; money; gold.  The second character means father's elder brother; senior; paternal elder uncle; eldest of brothers; respectful form of address.  The third character means happy; laugh; cheerful.  Combined it is supposed to mean a happy elder who has gold.  More importantly, the 3 characters pronounced in Mandarin sound like “Jim Butler”.

Ø       I’ve traveled to many countries and usually at the end of the trip you have a pocketful of heavy coins of various sizes.  China is mostly a “coinless” economy.  I’ve spent a total of about 2 weeks in China and I have received 1 coin during my entire time in the country.  The currency is called Renminbi which means “people’s currency”.  Everyone refers to it as RMB.  One RMB equals 12 cents.  There are all sorts of RMB notes.  I have received .10RMB (equals 1 penny) and .20 RMB notes.  The biggest note is a 100RMB note (equal to $12 or so).  They must have a big counterfeit problem with these notes because all large stores have some mechanism of checking the bills for authenticity.  Some stores have notes scanners and others have special pens to write on the notes to check them.

Ø       There is no tipping in China which is a nice change.

Ø       Beijing is a very cosmopolitan city but the Butlers are quite a novelty.  Since the Chinese only get to have one child and males are prized, the locals are astonished to see 2 boys together.  John and Matthew also stand out since they have blond hair, blue eyes and look like twins.  Janie took the boys to Tiananmen Square and she said she had to pose frequently for pictures.  I was in Ikea yesterday and a woman stopped us and wanted to take a picture of her daughter with John and Matthew.

Ø       Beijing is about 6,000 square miles in size.  Taxi are extremely cheap but so far we have had about a 60% success of the driver finding our destination without getting lost.  Taxi drivers typically speak no English at all.  I guess if they did they would have a better job than driving a taxi.

Ø       We are about 1,000 miles north of where the typhoon hit.  It has been cloudy, foggy or raining for the past 10 days here.  It has been an unusually wet summer here.  Beijing gets 23 inches of precipitation a year and 75% of that comes in the summer.  For comparison purposes DC gets 39 inches of precipitation on average.