From Beijing, an unfiltered view on business and economy.
After all our troubles during the day and a series of other exhausting meetings we decided to at least go out and celebrate our way: Chinese hotpot with lamb, pork blood and pork brain. Poor Sun could hardly open her eyes, we left stuffed, tired but at least relaxed. The restaurant is in one of the larger Julong Garden buildings.
After a late evening in our living room the previous night we were sleeping “like a log” around 2 am on Thanksgiving Day when I heard Valerie screaming at our bedroom door. I jumped out of the bed, groggy, did some steps and found myself with my feet in the water. Opening the door, Valerie pointed at the floor, the staircase, the living room – water and steam everywhere and the sound of water rushing down the staircase. I went into the dark living room, switched on the lights (in retrospect, not the best of ideas being barefoot in the water) and was shocked – the large room was like a sauna with a 2 meter high jet coming from the heating. Fortunately I managed to quickly close the taps and it stopped. The view was scary. In the living room sofas, carpets and everything on the floor were in over 1 cm of water, water had also covered half of the bedroom (and the carpets) and had went down from the 3rd floor up to the 1st floor. Fortunately all floors and the staircase are in stone and the two lower floors nothing much was standing in the water. I shouted to wake up Sun and asked Valerie to wake up the maid and start cleaning up. Turned out the maid’s husband was just visiting, so we were the six of us scooping up the dirty water into buckets and cleaning, removing anything from the floors that could be damaged. After one hour of frenzy, the bedroom, staircase and the two lower floors were dry, only the big silk carpets were still soaked. We opened the windows and went to bed. exhausted – to be ready for a busy day with many meetings.
At 9 am the problem was solved – a badly connected pipe and we could switch on the floor heating and the radiators to help the carpets dry. All in all we were very lucky and nothing much was damaged. The carpets even came out more clean.
I actually had this nightmare since long – that something like this would happen. The workmanship here is awful – sloppy, unprofessional and ignorance. Top that off with worsening quality. Really frightening. As a result, every year something busts or needs fixing.
We actually had the same problem in our other apartment in June, before it was rented. The bathroom was just finished when… the hot water connection to one of the sinks ruptured. As there was nobody, the bathroom was totally wrecked and the master bedroom seriously damaged. As usual, bad quality material.
When I complain I get the answer “it is already the best on the market”. Of course, as an engineer I am supposed not to understand all this and the Chinese around me seem constantly ignore my advise. Frustrating. Chinese can be so stubborn and ignorant in construction. No wonder most buildings are old after barely 5 years and renovation is needed every two years.
I will give more samples of the poor consumer goods on this blog. Keep posted.
A couple of months have passed and I have now a reasonable view on hits and who is viewing the blog – and how they land here. Yep, there are some good tools available for that!
One of the goals was to keep family and friends informed on daily life here (with pics – to avoid sending them out separately), what is going on. Remarkable is to find out how readers do a Google search, some weird searches I will not detail. Of course there is the usual spam, blocked as I review comments. Many faithful readers prefer to remain anonymous and post few or no comments.
So, what is your feedback? You can post a comment or simply drop me an email with suggestions and comments. Appreciated!
After some weeks of trouble free Internet, we again occasionally experience hijacking. You want to go to a certain website and you land in a totally different one. I checked with others and they also had the same experience. As we learned, the problem is not in our computers, would be hackers attacking China Netcom Internet system. We called China Netcom, our Internet local provider and as expected they claimed to be totally unaware. Of course, how could they admit hackers are more astute and Netcom is vulnerable? In China there is something called “lose face”…
See earlier posts for more details.
Many businesspeople travel around with laptops containing confidential information, private or company related. Be aware your precious laptop can be seized or its contents scrutinized (“forensic analysis”) by the customs people at customs and immigration checkpoints upon entering the country. Businesspeople might end up without their laptop they expect to use for presentations, work or private use. The search can be done “without probable cause, reasonable suspicion or warrant” according to the country’s court. What happens to the data, no guarantee. Just think about highly confidential company information or your wife’s nude picture to keep you in a good spirit during your trip.
Oops! Forgot to mention again. The country is the USA. Just imagine if Chinese customs would do the same, expect an international outcry.
Be warned. Source: IHT 25 October 06.
