Right, so Saturday was a day of relaxing. DD's friend Shu Li who now lives in London was back in Beijing and we went to visit her. Shu Li is very very rich. Well really Shu Li's brother is very very rich as he is number 5 on the Hong Kong stock market list (I do not know what that means) but anyway she has a massive house and swimming pool and all that jazz. DD says she is crazy and at first I had this image of a crazy eccentric woman but this was wrong. She was just angry. She shouts at everyone. She's not entirely evil or anything just not much fun to be around. And DD says that if Shu Li wants her to spend time with her she will have to pay for things. So we went to the spa.
At the spa you get naked. I've become used to pretending like everything is normal when it really isn't so I just went along with it. You don't share the shower but there isn't a door. Eventually I'm taken to a room on my own. A masseuse comes in and covers me up a bit. She massages my back. This is kind of nice but at times it hurt quite a lot. I haven't figured out if it's meant to or if there is something wrong with me. A bit of me wonders if it's because I have virtually no muscles though I have no idea why that would make it hurt. Anyway, they do that thing where they stop your blood flowing in your arm for a min and then let go and it feels really nice. It's a bit like the feeling when you have sat on your leg for too long and blood rushes back but without the pins and needles and feeling slightly concerned your leg may have given up on you completely and you'll never walk again.
After the massage I get a facial. It's my first facial so I didn't know what to expect. They rub in about 20 different creams. Some they take off others they leave for a while and then kind of dab you with a sponge. She put some gloop on and then covered my eyes and left. Then I thought I could hear her in the corner and I thought why is just watching me, surely this isn't normal, oh my god maybe she is going to kill me! So I try to open my eyes and it really hurt because the things covering my eyes have got some kind of bloody soothing cream on them. The pain caused my paranoia to subside and I realised she wasn't in the room it was just the air con rattling.
Next she attempted to ask me if I wanted to have my eyebrows done. It took a while to get this across. I thought she was telling me to close my eyes at first and then I thought she wanted to do my eyebrows so I said yes and then she looked confused and started pointing at her eyebrows so I said they looked nice. Eventually she got a pair of tweezers and a eyebrow razor and waved them at me. I picked tweezers and she used the razor anyway. Though to be fair I do have a lot of eyebrow.
Finally she gets a pair of ultra thin tweezers and sticks them into my face. This was by far the most painful part of the whole thing. After a while she says tong bu tong (which means does it hurt) I say Tong! (yes!) and she shows me all the gunk she has pulled out so far. It's quite amazing that I could have that much crap in my face and not know about it really. I let her continue without complaining and felt a bit guilty later when I covered my face in foundation because we were going out.
So I've learned that being pampered is fairly painful and rich people have to go to much less effort to look good than everyone else because other people do it for them but it's not a fun experience and they would be happier with the gunk in their faces.
For the evening we went to dinner with a couple who are friends with DD. DD was in the military secret services from the age of 14-19 and this is where she knows the man Wan Ge from (I remember his name because it sounds a bit like wanker though he seemed very nice). His wife who introduced herself to me as Kylie is learning English (from someone from Liverpool which I said was a little unfortunate but I don't think she understood). Their daughter goes to university at St Andrews and might be considering staying in Scotland so Kylie wants to be able to communicate. I wanted to say in that case learning English from a Liverpudlian might not be such a bad idea cause the Scottish accent is even harder to understand. But I didn't.
So we had a hot pot which is amazing. You have a a big bubbling pot in the middle and you throw stuff in and fish it out once cooked with your chop sticks then dunk it in a bowl of brown tasty stuff. It's great. In China they eat a lot. And they seem offended if I don't also eat a lot. So I've been trying but there is a limit. The other issue I have is that they eat fast. Some of you will know that I am not capable of eating quickly and I feel a bit silly when everyone has finish about 30mins before me and has eaten twice as much.
Anyway I need to get to the interesting bit. So Kylie says "do you like shopping" I say yes and she looks at her watch. It's 9pm. "We go" she says. So I follow her and we go to some Harvard inspired store and she picks up a few jackets and then she takes me to another store and says "do you like this store" I say yes because I've never heard of it and I don't want to offend her. She then says "anything you want I will buy for you, because I like you". Obviously a bit of me wants to buy everything just for the sake of it but I feel a bit worried about picking something too expensive. So she basically picks for me. I try it on and try to see how much it'll cost but the labels don't have prices on. She buys them for me and it comes to 1070 yuan (about £107)! She pays on a special store card. I'm very grateful and tell her I like her lots as well. Which wasn't a lie. I did really like her before she spent a load of money on me. Although a part of me did think who says money can't buy love?
On the way home DD tells me that the reason they have so much money is that the husband is very high up in the military and he gets bribed a lot! So I feel less guilty about having the money spent on me in a sense but a tad worried about what he might have been bribed to do.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Skip to the end...
I was going to explain everything that has happened since I arrived however I realised this would take forever so I'm going to pretty much start from this week and fill in the blanks when I have a lot of time on my hands. I've reached the point where I'm starting to get the hang of China. Me and Dong Dong (my aunt) had two very important meetings last week in which we had to bid for two contracts.
The first contract we were bidding for was to organise a gala which will be held on 18 July this year. The gala is to celebrate the opening of three tourist islands in the Tang Shan Bay region which is about 3 hours from Beijing. We will have several traditional Chinese dances, some kind of Chinese celebrity singer and some famous hosts. We also have to organise the dinner and the advertising.
So we worked 7am - 2am everyday for 4 days and then feeling very tired we went to give the presentation. I could tell that if we didn't get the contract I would be fired and I still think this was the case. In fact I'd resigned myself to being sent home even if we got it. DD seemed very stressed and unhappy with me. Chinese people do not arrange meetings in advance and they won't necessarily stick to the arranged time. So when on Saturday the meeting was moved from Wednesday to Monday I was not that surprised. And then on Sunday we were told the meeting would be at 10am. This meant we had to leave on Sunday afternoon and stay in a hotel in Tang Shan so we would be on time to the meeting.
So Sunday night in the hotel was not fun. We were all stressed and DD most of all. I was not prepared enough. DD and Da Long (a man we live with who I believe is the father of DD's baby) were arguing in Chinese. This had been happening a lot and I didn't know what they were arguing about or how I should behave. Should I ask what they were fighting about or assume it's none of my business? I decided to be typically English about it and pretended I hadn't even noticed they had had an argument.
The next morning we get ready and I upset DD on the way to breakfast by asking her a question that interrupts her thoughts. She tells me I can't just leap into conversation, I need to say excuse me Dong Dong and then speak. It's rude not to do this and it's true that if she was just my boss and not my aunt I would have been more polite however I get a bit confused about the boundaries because of being a part of the family. Anyway after she has eaten she perks up a bit. She says in a much nicer way that she just wants me to learn how to be a good PA when I'm not working for her. She does the whole positive thinking thing. She says she thinks we will get the contract and I realise from the rest of our conversation that the reason she is so stressed is that the family has run out of money and we need the contract to pay the bills. My aunt is a very successful business woman however she does not have anything which brings her a constant source of income.
On the way to the bid we run into trouble. The most ridiculous traffic jam I've ever seen. There were cars in the middle which were going across horizontally for no apparent reason. There were four lanes on each side of the road however our side of the road was using seven lanes and the other side only had one lane. The other side of the road was moving and our side was not. It was absurd.
Anyway we make the presentation and then some things happen that I didn't understand and we go to dinner. At dinner I'm allowed to sit next to the big boss which is unusual as I'm only the support staff but on this occasion I was allowed. The big boss talked to me a little and I just about made the conversation work. Then he asks "how much can you drink" (in Chinese though obviously) as he says this a bottle of Chinese spirits is brought around. I say I'm not sure and the big boss laughs. The girl next to me can speak English and she explains that the big boss can drink 2 bottles and I say I definitely can't drink that much.
In China, particularly at business meetings, it is important to toast each other a lot. When a toast is made it is customary to down the contents of your glass. They like to make a toast every few minuets or so, so this can get messy. The big boss was very pleased that I drank alcohol and when I didn't seem fazed by the first two shots he decided I should toast everyone around the table. There were seven people around the table. I was quite drunk by the end of it although I was still behaving quite sensibly I believe. Everyone was very concerned about me but I was fine just a little giggly.
So the big boss was very impressed and we got the contract. I was very relieved and also excited because I'm not being sent home and I get to go to Hong Kong and buy a new laptop! Also to Henna Island and stay in a five star hotel. And go to the Shangri-La after the project is finished. Very excited about all of this.
The second project is the one I'm mostly working on right now. I am setting up four exhibitions which will start in London then move to Paris, then Berlin and finish in Milan. I'm project manager so this is a lot of work and responsibility but I'm really enjoying it. Also I might get to go to each place for two months so I'm working hard in the hope that I can. I'd be in London for the Olympics so I wouldn't miss that and it would be great to see the project through to the end.
I'm running out of steam now so I'll leave it here.
The first contract we were bidding for was to organise a gala which will be held on 18 July this year. The gala is to celebrate the opening of three tourist islands in the Tang Shan Bay region which is about 3 hours from Beijing. We will have several traditional Chinese dances, some kind of Chinese celebrity singer and some famous hosts. We also have to organise the dinner and the advertising.
So we worked 7am - 2am everyday for 4 days and then feeling very tired we went to give the presentation. I could tell that if we didn't get the contract I would be fired and I still think this was the case. In fact I'd resigned myself to being sent home even if we got it. DD seemed very stressed and unhappy with me. Chinese people do not arrange meetings in advance and they won't necessarily stick to the arranged time. So when on Saturday the meeting was moved from Wednesday to Monday I was not that surprised. And then on Sunday we were told the meeting would be at 10am. This meant we had to leave on Sunday afternoon and stay in a hotel in Tang Shan so we would be on time to the meeting.
So Sunday night in the hotel was not fun. We were all stressed and DD most of all. I was not prepared enough. DD and Da Long (a man we live with who I believe is the father of DD's baby) were arguing in Chinese. This had been happening a lot and I didn't know what they were arguing about or how I should behave. Should I ask what they were fighting about or assume it's none of my business? I decided to be typically English about it and pretended I hadn't even noticed they had had an argument.
The next morning we get ready and I upset DD on the way to breakfast by asking her a question that interrupts her thoughts. She tells me I can't just leap into conversation, I need to say excuse me Dong Dong and then speak. It's rude not to do this and it's true that if she was just my boss and not my aunt I would have been more polite however I get a bit confused about the boundaries because of being a part of the family. Anyway after she has eaten she perks up a bit. She says in a much nicer way that she just wants me to learn how to be a good PA when I'm not working for her. She does the whole positive thinking thing. She says she thinks we will get the contract and I realise from the rest of our conversation that the reason she is so stressed is that the family has run out of money and we need the contract to pay the bills. My aunt is a very successful business woman however she does not have anything which brings her a constant source of income.
On the way to the bid we run into trouble. The most ridiculous traffic jam I've ever seen. There were cars in the middle which were going across horizontally for no apparent reason. There were four lanes on each side of the road however our side of the road was using seven lanes and the other side only had one lane. The other side of the road was moving and our side was not. It was absurd.
Anyway we make the presentation and then some things happen that I didn't understand and we go to dinner. At dinner I'm allowed to sit next to the big boss which is unusual as I'm only the support staff but on this occasion I was allowed. The big boss talked to me a little and I just about made the conversation work. Then he asks "how much can you drink" (in Chinese though obviously) as he says this a bottle of Chinese spirits is brought around. I say I'm not sure and the big boss laughs. The girl next to me can speak English and she explains that the big boss can drink 2 bottles and I say I definitely can't drink that much.
In China, particularly at business meetings, it is important to toast each other a lot. When a toast is made it is customary to down the contents of your glass. They like to make a toast every few minuets or so, so this can get messy. The big boss was very pleased that I drank alcohol and when I didn't seem fazed by the first two shots he decided I should toast everyone around the table. There were seven people around the table. I was quite drunk by the end of it although I was still behaving quite sensibly I believe. Everyone was very concerned about me but I was fine just a little giggly.
So the big boss was very impressed and we got the contract. I was very relieved and also excited because I'm not being sent home and I get to go to Hong Kong and buy a new laptop! Also to Henna Island and stay in a five star hotel. And go to the Shangri-La after the project is finished. Very excited about all of this.
The second project is the one I'm mostly working on right now. I am setting up four exhibitions which will start in London then move to Paris, then Berlin and finish in Milan. I'm project manager so this is a lot of work and responsibility but I'm really enjoying it. Also I might get to go to each place for two months so I'm working hard in the hope that I can. I'd be in London for the Olympics so I wouldn't miss that and it would be great to see the project through to the end.
I'm running out of steam now so I'll leave it here.
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