Once Upon A Time in China

Day 1: Way beyond my eyes could reach is nothing but pure white clouds like cotton balls scattered all over the horizon of a blue linen tapestry. That is what I can see now as I take a glimpse through the window of China Northwest Airlines on my way to Tianjin, China via Hongkong. Yes, here I am, thousands of feet above the ground, sitting beside the wing of this giant metal bird. What a place to sit, 20A to be exact, to get the chance to view the earth below. Well, I asked for a window seat and, voila, here I am on a window seat just as I asked for and I have nobody to blame. The flight is a one and a half air travel to Hong Kong and another three hours to our destination. We left the Ninoy Aquino Int'l airport at exactly 700 hours. Take note, I was not late!!! Imagine how early did I wake up just to be there at 5:30AM. At 400 hours, I was on my toes preparing for another trip of my not so boring life. If I'll be flying out of the country everyday just to come to work, I won't be late most probably and my boss will be grateful, I bet. It's a Sunday... OK... happy now?

I'm writing this on a piece of Cathay Pacific stationery I asked from the stewardess who had a face as if asking me... what for?(If you're reading this, obviously, I already rewrote it for your reading pleasure. I'm a frustrated doctor you know so better forget about my handwriting.) I hope to finish this on my way back to Manila and publish it on my website(well, if you're reading this, I've achived my goal)... wish me luck!

After an hour and a half of one of those flights I've flown, we were at Chet ____ Kok airport lazying around with my colleague, Rhedd Viray and fellow travellers, some were lying around, sleeping, waiting for our flight to Tianjin. A four hour waiting period was what I was talking about and it was a good thing that I brought with me a book by Manfred F.R. Kets De Vries, Life and Death in the Executive Fast Lane- Essays on Irrational Organizations and Their Leaders, which has been with me for almost a year now but seems too shy to reveal the rationality beneath its pages. It was only then that we were having this so-called connection. And what a connection it was for I have opened a chapter on international assignments with a quotation by Bernard Russell saying, "Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation or creed". I didn't get the relation at first so better see Chapter 7 - Are you Sure you Want to Work Abroad? to find out more.

Nothing spectacular happened on the plane... except for the Vanilla flavored Haagen Daz, which travelled from France just to be tasted by us somewhere on top of Thailand, that was so hard you could hammer a nail using it with less effort.

12 hours after I woke up, I was finally in China. The land of the People's Republic. That's how I interpreted it after I saw "People's Republic of China" at the entrance going to the immigration which gave me flashes of thoughts where we were being dragged, stripped naked and being asked, "How long are you going to stay here?" by fast speaking uniformed Chinese officer. Well, it was the history of being a communist country that was instilled in my memory until now.

The hotel was a 30 minute ride from the airport. The long wait and tiring travel faded away after I entered my room. A complete apartment,WOW!! At the left of the entrance is a kitchen with a not so old model of a 4 ft Sanyo refrigerator, an electric burner, a microwave oven, an airpot with 2 cups and saucers deftly arranged beside it. Over the counter or a divider as it seems just straight from the door is a 4-seater dining set with complimentary fruits placed on top of it, 2 bananas and 2 apples, with a handwritten welcome note signed by the General Manager wishing me to have an enjoyable stay . Talking of personalized customer service here. Just after the dining set is the living area with a sofa facing a 29-inch colored tv with a round table in between plus a single couch at the corner of the room all are positioned in front of a wide window with a view of the city. At the right of the ingress is the room with a twinbed neatly prepared for my expected arrival and another colored tv for my viewing pleasure, I guess.

8:00 in the evening and the sun is just starting to set from its tiring task of shining all day. They have literally a long day here. My late night was spent watching "Deep Blue Sea" after which I turned to my rare experience of having a deep sleep. This is just the first day of my week-long story.

The sun touched my face at 4:30 in the morning and with my eyes timidly capturing the hands of my watch placed on top of my bedside table, I wrapped myself back to my cocoon trying to continue the metamorphosis of my dream. 7:00 sharp and my cellfone a.k.a my alarm clock is beeping at the top of its lungs trying to muddle my consciousness. I was up, 30 minutes after. A brand new day is ahead of me... a brand new Chinese day.

The office is within the same building, at the 4th floor, 24 floors below me. Nothing amazing happened here... typical office set up, work, a little chat with my Chinese colleagues, Eric He, Richard Cheng, Linda Yang, Ms. this and Mr that. I had a hard time communicating with them since all you would often get would be a sweet smile or a simple 'ni hao' which means hello in English.

I had a tenderloin steak and a ceasar salad for dinner plus 3 bottles of Heineken and a bottle of TsingTao, a local Chinese beer. While being serenaded by the sound of a flute and piano being played by two Chinese artists at the Cafe Floathana where we end our day of experience and great pleasures.

The third day was quite an ordinary one. We had our lunch at Shanghai Express, a restaurant at the third floor of the hotel. One thing I could say here was we ordered for an eel delicacy which I was not excited about. The afternoon is work, work, work. Dinner is quite a special one. We walked a couple of blocks looking for this restaurant recommended by one of my Chinese colleagues, Richard Cheng, a 28 year old, married guy who has been with SLEB for just two months now. Good thing we were with Joannes, a consultant from Solcorp who is with us to provide support. He's a Chinese who grew up in Hong Kong and migrated to Canada. He's been there for six years now. If not for him, I could not imagine how we could communicate with the waiters who keeps on talking to us in Mandarin and how we could find the place to eat since all signages are in Chinese characters. You could count on your fingers the words in English which are basically used by international hotels. The place was Kiesley, Kieppley or something to that effect. A beerhouse and restaurant. Yes, you read it right. A beerhouse. But don't get me wrong. It was a cozy place similar to the 'Brewery' in Glorietta. I ordered for a Chicken with black pepper sauce as Joannes interpreted it to me since the menu was in Chinese. Now you understand why it was great that we were with him. After dinner, we walked and passed by a park with a lot of people at 9:30 in the evening doing calisthenics while another group of people are having ballroom dancing at another corner of the plaza. The plaza is somewhat a big stage surrounded by buildings like giant pillars. We walked and walked until we saw the Hyatt Hotel where we stayed at the lobby and smoked cigarettes. The place is big and brightly lit. I noticed the centerpiece which is a large arrangement of flowers arranged on a huge pot placed at the center of a wooden round table with four well crafted wooden chairs. My mom would appreciate it so much.

As we walk back to the hotel, I noticed that bicycles are really the main means of transportation. A lot of people riding bikes are still on the road. Young, old, girl, boy, students, carpenter, office workers and even pretty ladies wearing dresses and skirts with high heels. We noticed also that the type of bike are quite vintage. Old model bikes not the Shimanos, Jembolys, Momos that most of us have back in Manila.

Passed 10 and I’m back in my room writing once again the escapades I had for the day. It’s pretty interesting to find the words to describe all the things that I perceived and paint it in my memory through this, my first ever travel story.

Day four in a place thousand miles away from the Pearl of the Orient. Never did I imagine that I’ll be going to this place and spent a week just having a good time. That’s how I feel though I’m actually working full time. Linda Yang, the IT manager invited us to have lunch and she brought us to a place where you could find a variety of dumplings, their specialty A hundred of them. The place is a typical Chinese restaurant. Table with tea cups, saucers, soup bowls and chopsticks all waiting to be used. A wide glass window catches my wandering eyes as I saw women all in white wearing a chef’s cap with covers on their mouth like surgeons on a critical operation. They were all seated around a wooden table busy rolling, wrapping and preparing each dumpling as if they are sculptors trying to finish their masterpiece. At one end is a group of three ladies preparing the wrapper and as they finish each roll, they passed them to the other ladies who are busy wrapping each dumpling. There were a lot of bowls in front of them with different fillings for the dumpling. I saw green, yellow, red, brown ground fillings. They seemed like a variety of pork, vegetable, shrimps, crab meat and other ingredients that I could no longer identify. My attention was caught as our orders are being placed in front of us. 6 plates of dumplings each having around more than 15 pieces. Tough meal I said to myself. Never again will I taste dumplings after this. After office which we were able to accomplish our work, they invited us to play bowling. We went to a place near where we had been last night and played bowling. Rhedd, Joannes, Eric, Richard, Linda, Sherry and Jennifer, all from IT group under Linda, played and I just watched them while drinking tea, a fruit tea they said. They brought us to a restaurant for dinner. Duck Spoon restaurant. That’s how they translate the Chinese name to English. The place is a big place. You have to choose first from a variety of choices which they will cook before it will be served to you. Clams, lobsters, fishes, prawns, shellfishes and frogs. Yes, live frogs, those that you see in Budweiser commercial. There are also vegetables, Chinese noodles, assorted mushrooms, duck liver, pig stomach, frog feet, see cucumber, dried lizard, duck tongue and other rare choices which I never thought of having as a meal. Good thing, they did not order those special ones. One by one, the food are being served. We had a lot and the only food I could identity were the prawns, meat balls, pepper and century egg, which is my favorite. I thought there will be no end since it keeps on coming. One after the other even our table is already full of different dishes. Whew! talk about your last meal... burp! oops, excuse me!

After a long day of Notes configuration and set-up, we get back to our room to have the long-awaited rest. I was too sleepy the whole day for I have not really slept since the day I arrived. At 9:00 pm, Rhedd, Joannes and I went outside of the hotel to have dinner. We really don’t know where to eat but just as we are crossing the street beside the hotel, Joannes translated to us that what ‘s in the corner of the road is a Korean restaurant that offers barbecue, which I have been longing for. We went inside and as we expected, the menu is in Chinese and Korean, there was no English. OK, so our Chinese colleague started translating to us what’s on the menu. Pork, Chicken, Beef , lamb, vegetables, we let him order while we order for a bottle of Tsingtao beer. Our table has a grill box placed at the center with an exhaust tube on top of it in, front of us just above our head. This is the first time that I’m going to eat on a Korean restaurant. They started preparing our table. A box of charcoal on fire was place inside the grill box in front of us and the waitress brought the slices of beef and started grilling them. As the strips of beef are being cook we started our dinner. A small sauce dish was given to us with a brownish sauce on top of green leaves. We tasted it and it was peanut butter. We thought it was a salad, a Korean salad but we were wrong. The waitress pointed to me that the barbecue should be dipped on the sauce and should be wrapped with green lettuce, I’m not sure if its lettuce but it looks like it. The food was good. We had a lot of leafy dishes with mushrooms and stripped tofu. We finished 3 bottles of TsingTao which later on we found out that it was light just like the San Mig light we have in Manila. We talked about the history of China, dynasties, Beijing, Great Wall and others until only us were the remaining customer. We all went back to the hotel after giving the waitress a 5 RMB which she was surprised because it was not a common thing to give tips in restaurants.

Friday morning and it was our last working day in the office. I was pretty excited to finish my job so we could have our plan of going to Beijing becomes a reality. All day was engaged in summing up the work and ensuring that everything was in place. I have prepared for the project and most of my time I’ve spent in Manila prior to this was on preparation and planning. Now that I’m almost done and successfully accomplished my task. I have all the reason to go to the Great Wall as a fruit for my hard labor. Linda has already arranged for the hotel in Beijing. At around 4:30, we are back on our room packing for our trip to Beijing where we will spend the night. Richard was waiting for us downstairs for he will be bringing us to the train station.

to be continued...