Hospitality and Generosity

Steph has been doing a diligent job of posting to her blog about our first few days in Shanghai, and I’ll apologize in advance for any duplication of stories and observations in mine… Legal disclaimer complete, here we go…

I am on my way to work… weird to think about, but I will have roughly 1 hour worth of work time on both the way to and the way from the office. Daniel, our driver, who as you might know from Steph’s blog (www.swelsh73.blogspot.com), speaks some English (which is rare, and makes life so much easier), is piloting our standard issue Buick minivan the roughly 1 hour drive south and west to Intel’s Zizhu campus… I joke that Zizhu is Mandarin for ‘middle of no where’.

So this morning, my first morning driving to Zizhu, I decided to use to do an update to my Blog. Most mornings this will be time used to get through the mountains of e-mail generated by the program I am assigned to manage, or occasionally I will be calling into meetings with the US (where it is 15 hours earlier).

The focus of this morning’s conversation (albeit one way) is the hospitality and generosity of the Chinese people.

Our experience to this point has been great. We spent 3 days in temp housing – which was 2 connecting rooms at the Four Points by Sheraton in Pudong. The kids did well, although they were awake EARLY all 3 mornings (2am on day 1, 4am on day 2 and 5 am on day 3). They are still not completely normal on their sleep patterns, but last night was the closest thing we have to ‘back on schedule’ with them going to bed at nearly 8pm, and getting up sometime just after 6am. If we can get into that schedule permanently, we will be in fine shape.

I mentioned Daniel, our driver. His job, as crazy as this may seem given his title, is to drive us around. That’s really the complete scope of his job. Be where he says he’s going to be, when he says he is going to be there, and drive. Consistent with just about everyone we have met in China, he’s been willing to help out the poor Americans far beyond the scope of his job. He worked diligently to get our 47,000 pounds of luggage into the minivan in 100 degree heat and 90% humidity when we arrived, he helps load and unload our groceries, and today, when I contacted the driver of an expat that returned to Oregon a month ago about picking up some stuff the expat had left for us, he offered to drop me off at work, and go pick the stuff up for me while I was working. Now maybe this keeps him from being bored waiting for me to finish work, or waiting for Steph to need to go someplace, but per his job, he could have just sat there and waited… read the paper, talked on the phone, napped,.. but instead he offers to go run an errand for me, so that things will be just a little easier.

The apartment is great, but that is less of a comment about the apartment itself, and more of a comment about the experience. The landlord met us at the apartment with the leasing agent from the complex, and 2 people from the relocation company with which Intel contracts… Add in Steph and I and the 2 kids, and I’m glad the apartment is as big as it is.

The landlord (Nancy) is a great person. She and her husband are US citizens, having lived in the US for 20 years, until they moved back to Shanghai 4 years ago. They lived in this apartment with Nancy’s mother, and moved to a townhouse about 10 minutes away that affords them more space.

Nancy and her son, George, walked us through the apartment, and more importantly all the Chinese characters on all the appliances and electronics. Nancy said at least a half a dozen times ‘you need anything, you just call George, he’ll come right over’. George didn’t seem to mind… What a great kid! He even created an 'answer sheet/key’ with all the appliances/electronics and the English translations of all of their function keys.

Nancy then apologized for her husband, who was working, and could not be there to meet us and welcome us, and he instructed her to take us out to lunch – his way of apologizing for not being able to welcome us himself. This small gesture of hospitality is very consistent with everyone we have come into contact with to this point in China… With the possible exception of the woman who tells you to strip down and get into the hospital gown at the Government Health Check… That’s a story for later. Lunch was finished, and Nancy provided a little driving tour of the area surrounding our apartment complex, complete with recommendations on where to go for good Chinese food in the area.

Another example of the hospitality and generosity of the Chinese people we have met: We decided when we provided the list of items we wanted furnished in the apartment, that we wanted to pick out a couple of things ourselves, asking Nancy in the up front negotiations to just reimburse us for these. This was a bad decision made months before we arrived in China, not thinking that just feeding our children and buying milk were going to be hard enough… We thought navigating a city of 20 million people, speaking no mandarin, and trying to buy furniture was a good idea? Again, bad idea… As if to explain to us how foolish we were, but do so in the most polite manner possible, Nancy enlisted her friend, Rebecca, who was the leasing agent for the apartment complex that showed us the apartment when we were here originally. She insured us that Rebecca would be happy to 'help us shop for furniture'.

Rebecca took us to what can only be described as the world’s largest mall dedicated to nothing but furniture. Seriously, this place was probably 7 stories or more tall, with 20 stores per floor. All the couches, beds, chairs, kitchen and bath, flooring, and office furniture you could imagine… Amazing. For those of you with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) that are noticing discrepancies between Steph’s blog and mine, which might be highlighted in the description of the world’s largest furniture mall: When noticing slight discrepancies, always default to mine being the truth… I am hardly ever wrong… hardly.

Rebecca was fabulous. She translated, negotiated, and was patient as Steph and I disagreed on what ‘we’ wanted. She insured we took advantage of the ‘promotions’ that were going on, that included cash back if you purchased over a certain value of items at one store. Although, at one point I think one of the stores took some liberty with income reporting law, as they took cash for an office chair and noted that part of the discounted price was that we would not get an ‘official government receipt’, only a receipt from the store. Rebecca assured us this was fine… so we offered up the cash and the chair should get delivered today.

We have found the people here to be amazing… now this is based off a less than complete data set – 5 days into a 730 day assignment – but until proved otherwise, this becomes the ‘pre-conceived notion’ we enter into each interaction with.

Looking forward to catching up with you all on e-mail, Skype, comments on our blogs, or our deepest hope – an actual trip by friends and family to Shanghai!

Cheers!