Beijing, China (GMT +8)

(Originally written by Fuji on November 10, 2010)

My work area in the Wu Dang Mountain CR, 11th floor, Full Link Plaza Building

 Just some random thoughts early on this Wednesday, November 10.

- Meals in Chinese restaurants come typically with a room temperature or warm glass of water for your drink, unless you ask for something else. During the meals, there were no attempts to voluntarily refill your glass of water. Not sure whether that's normal service or just that there are so many folks eating that they can't be bothered.

- Smoking in restaurants here in Beijing is just as prevalent as in Shanghai. The smokers don't care about their affect on those around them at all.  I don't enjoy my meals as much and tend to clog up in my sinuses because of the second hand smoke.

- Still massive amounts of construction going on around Beijing. A real architects dream here.

- Traffic congestion continues to be a big problem for this city. During the Olympics they instituted a rationing system based on even/odd numbered days of the week and the last digit of vehicle license plates. For instance if the day of the week was an even number and you had a license plate that ended in an even number, you were forbidden to drive that day. My host Jeff says it worked pretty well. Immediately halved the number of cars on the roads. Today they still have a rationing system that changes monthly and entails drivers sitting out 1 day a week - the same day every week - until that day rotates the following month. Better than doing nothing. :-)

- Negotiating the traffic in and around the city on anything 2 wheeled still amazes me. They're fearless drivers and appear to believe they have just as much right on the streets as any other vehicle.

- Beijing's taxi drivers tend to be much more capitalistic than the Shanghai drivers. Slow to offer up change for fares, if they offer up at all. :-)  Very ratey and presumptive if you ask me and I'm still not quite right with the behavior in my head.  Although I do admit, it's much easier just popping over 20rmb for a 12rmb ride than trying to get change with drivers acting a bit of the deaf/dumb part. Still, it would be nice of them to offer up a receipt. The funny/ironic part is that all sanctioned cabs have a bi-lingual recording at the end of a ride that says, basically, pay what the meter says and get a receipt... which the drivers in this city tend to ignore!

- The whole taxi culture is fascinating to me. I spent 1/2 an hour at the end of the day just looking at the flow of traffic down below the building I'm in and noticed:
-- Just like in Shanghai where most taxi's are VWs, the taxi's in Beijing are mostly Hyundai due to some mutual partnering agreement between the city and Hyundai auto manufacturing.
-- Hyundai taxi's are only differentiated by their paint schemes for the most part. From top to bottom: dark blue/yellow/dark blue; green/yellow/green; white/yellow/white; maroon/yellow/maroon; brown/yellow/brown. The paint schemes have a common yellow stripe amongst them, but all represent different companies.
-- There are some larger, higher end, more luxurious black taxi's but in much less volume.
-- Finally, there are independents in unmarked cars with no signage that try to entice you to go with them but, I'm wary of them and choose not to give them my business.

- Not sure why but, I find that Asians in general prefer warm weather inside and outside to cooler temps.  It’s quite warm in the offices I’m in here in Beijing, to me, uncomfortably so.  My own kin in Japan, Hiro and Reiko, used to crank up the heat in our home in New Jersey whenever they could.  Granted it was Winter in New Jersey but, not that cold and they would literally have the thermostat up above 80 degrees F routinely!

- So far I've witnessed one really bad hazy, smoggy day, followed by 2 very clear days and then a not so clear day yesterday. Not sure exactly what's going on with that but, can't blame it all on the vehicle induced air pollution based on what I've seen. Beijing is known to have the occasional dust storm.

- Beijing and New York are very close to lying on or about the same line of latitude and have similar temperature ranges. It's quite chilly here and so it is in NJ/NY.

- Most large buildings (hotels and business skyscrapers) I've been in have a fairly sizeable labrinthe of multi-decked shopping malls with all types of eateries and vendors peddling the most pricey items of jewelry and fashion and more reasonable knock-offs and consumables. I really have no interest in browsing those establishments. I find it much more satisfying commuting to a local, old fashioned district packed with the sights, sounds, smells and people working hard to make a living... like I stumbled upon in Shanghai. Time permitting I will try to find a comparable area here in Beijing on Thursday before I jet off to Singapore.

View out of my Dell Beijing conference room

- The building that contains Dell employees in Beijing, Tower 'A' located at the Full Link Plaza, had a fire drill yesterday except, you couldn't tell by the folks with me on the 11th floor. :-) How did I know about the fire drill?  Well, I was having a conversation with Jeff in the conference room reserved for my use here in Beijing - it has a window view to the West of the city - and I noticed that the air outside my window was getting hazy... I thought due to a sand storm or something? The next thing I notice, there's a significant stream of water hitting all around the the location under my window with water splashing all around.  Looked outside and, yep, there's a fire truck on the street below with a water gun boom arm extended 9 stories up spraying at some smoke pots that had been lit on a ledge 3 floors below my conference room! There were a ton of folks standing down on the sidewalk near the fire engine, looking up. I don't think I've ever witnessed a fire drill in the US that included the actual deployment and use of a high pressure water gun/hose - pretty cool!

OK, enough observations for now. :-)


Fire Drill - Beijing Style!