Laggin'

People have told me that the time adjustment from China to America is harder than going from America to China. It seems to me that going forward eleven hours or back thirteen is pretty much the same. I'm not sure why one would be significantly more difficult than another. But I have heard such is the case.

If anybody knows anything about this or has an opinion about why, I'd be curious to hear it. I'd like to do a Google search on time zone switching, but am not really sure what terms to search for.

All I do know at the moment is that I slept two hours last night and am completely screwed up time-wise. Qian is doing a bit better than I am, but she's not doing that well really. The first couple days were actually quite smooth, but the past couple have been rough.

My goal today is to not take a nap no matter how much I want to. I took a 3.5 hour nap yesterday. That wasn't a good idea.

Despite sleep problems, everything is going really well so far. We watched the DVD of our Chinese wedding ceremony with my brother and parents on Friday night, went out for dinner and drinks with my friends on Saturday night, and had a cousin/aunt/uncle family taco night (25 people total) last night.

Qian is doing really well with names surprisingly. She pretty much had all 25 people straight last night.

People have been really impressed with her English level. My friend Luke told me that she already has a Kansas accent (or, one could say, the General American accent). While I've been frustrated by our lack of use of Chinese in day-to-day life in China (and my lack of fluency in Chinese), I believe our English-based relationship is now paying dividends for Qian.

This week should be cool. We have a wedding to plan and such. Although tedious, it should be fun.

Coming to America

Qian and I completed our day long journey or so from Xi'an to Kansas City yesterday. After a very deep and hard night of sleep, we're now sitting around, hanging out in the good ol' US of A!

The trip was, uh, long. Xian -> Beijing -> San Francisco -> Salt Lake City -> Kansas City. Including stops in airports, the trip came out to almost exactly twenty four hours.

Considering how difficult getting the visa for Qian was, I was a little bit concerned that, upon our arrival in San Francisco, the visa people there would give us trouble with getting Qian into the country. Thankfully, the Customs and Immigration officials at the San Francisco airport were all very polite and friendly though. The customs declaration guy even waved us through and congratulated us on our upcoming marriage instead of going through our bags. Very cool!

So, so far, the run ins with officials we've had have been infinitely better than the ones we had in in China in Guangzhou.

We're getting married over Labor Day weekend here in KC. So for the next several days, it's going to be full on marriage mode. Should be pretty intense. Very exciting too though.

I'm really looking forward to the coming days when Qian will meet my family and friends.

Obama in November

Obama is going to make it over to China in November.

From Reuters:

Image from France24.com

BEIJING, Aug 22 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will visit China in mid-November, the new United States ambassador to Beijing said on Saturday, setting a date for a big summit likely to tackle the global economy, North Korea and climate change.

Washington's new envoy to Beijing, Jon Huntsman Jr., told reporters Obama "is going to be visiting in the middle of November", but he did not give specific dates.

Until now, neither Beijing nor Washington has publicly given such a firm time for the big visit.

It means the U.S. President is likely to go to Beijing and perhaps other regional capitals after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit in Singapore on 14-15 November.

Huntsman, speaking at his residence after arriving in the Chinese capital, said relations between the two economic and political powers were improving.

"By the end of the year, we should be in better shape than ever before between the United States and China," he said, in a speech that switched between English and fluent Mandarin Chinese.

Read On

It'll be crazy when Obama comes over here. I can imagine that China, on the whole, will be pretty fired up. I don't hear about Obama that much anymore over here, but I think he's still a fairly popular guy.

I know that Obama's numbers are down now in America. From what I can tell, a lot of people are very underwhelmed with how he's doing. I'm having a bit of trouble gauging his performance and America's reaction to him from China. I'm looking forward to immersing myself into more American news and politics when I get back to the States soon.

Saving Face at All Costs

China's stock market, which, until a couple weeks ago, had nearly doubled from early January, has run into some trouble.

From Bloomberg:

Chart from Bloomberg

China’s benchmark stock index, the world’s worst performer this month, may fall another 10 percent as bank lending slows, said Andy Xie, a former Morgan Stanley chief Asian economist.

“The current correction is reflecting the tightening in lending,” said Xie, who correctly predicted in April 2007 that China’s equities would tumble. “We’ve seen the peak of this market cycle, though there’s likely to be a bounce as the government seeks to stabilize the market.”

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index plunged 5.8 percent yesterday, the most since Nov. 18, extending its decline from this year’s high on Aug. 4 to 17 percent. The gauge, the worst performer among 89 benchmark indexes tracked by Bloomberg worldwide, sank as foreign direct investment plunged and Yunnan Copper Industry Co. posted a loss, saying there are “no clear signs” of a recovery. The Bank of New York Mellon China ADR Index, which tracks American depositary receipts, slumped 5 percent, the most since March 2.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) stimulus package, coupled with record bank lending in the first six months, helped the Shanghai index more than double this year from the low on Nov. 4. An estimated 1.16 trillion yuan of loans were invested in the stock market in the first five months, China Business News reported on June 29, citing Wei Jianing, a deputy director at the Development and Research Center under the State Council, China’s Cabinet.

The equities rally faltered as new loans in July fell to less than a quarter of June’s level and the securities regulator allowed initial public offerings after a nine-month moratorium.

The government may order the national social security fund to support the market before Oct. 1, when the Communist Party celebrates the 60th anniversary of taking power, according to Xie. Other measures that may be taken include halting the approval of IPOs and share placements, he said.

“This is not the bursting of the bubble,” Xie, who is now an independent economist, said by telephone. “The government will be under pressure to take action because a lot of people have lost money.”

Read On

I'm not simply posting this because of the huge loss that was posted yesterday. For all I know, stock prices may be up today or by the end of the week. Reacting to every rise or fall of the Chinese stock market will probably not tell too descriptive of a story and will instead surely paint a very bi-polar picture.

The thing about this article that struck me were the comments from the analyst, Mr. Xie, about the upcoming anniversary in China and the need to have things "going well" when that day occurs.

Is the "government action" that Mr. Xie says is imminent the most prudent thing to do at this time? I suppose it depends upon what that action is. If it were regulations aimed at promoting stability in the markets and economy, then those could be a good thing. But if it is simply more cash aimed at propping up otherwise stalling and over-inflated markets, then I would think that that would be pretty harmful.

A few days ago, there was a discussion in the comments of one of my posts about the notion of "saving face" and how important and central to Chinese culture the concept is. Hopfrog, a frequent commenter, encapsulated the absurdity of doing things for the sake of saving face very well, I think:

I personally think if it weren't for this whole ingrained "save face" concept that the government would do the right thing and regulate their markets to prevent the crash, which I will guarantee, is imminent.

Saving face is without a doubt the most moronic ancient concept among any culture on the planet. Yeah, let's not be open and honest and try to improve... why would we do that when we can lie to ourselves and each and continue to make mistakes while maintaining a false pride based on lies?? BRILLLIANT!!!

I'm not a savvy investor and this stuff that drives how markets work is all new to me in the past year. But the idea that saving face would be the driving force behind government economic policy and particularly the intentional creation of a bubble is crazy to me.

If money is pumped into the Chinese markets so that October 1st is a grand day, I really hope that China has a glorious day that they remember forever. Because it'll certainly be an expensive one.

逆流而上

This morning, I asked Qian if there is a Chinese idiom for "swimming upstream." I don't know why, but this seems to me exactly the kind of phrase that the Chinese would have an idiom for. She gave me a four character phrase, but she said it isn't an idiom per se. The phrase is 逆流而上 (ni liu er shang).

The reason I asked about this kind of a phrase is because after reading an article about Americans coming to China for work the other day, I have the feeling that Qian and I are about to leave a relatively smooth and calm brook and are about to begin walking upstream in a substantially stronger, and possibly raging, river.

From The New York Times:

BEIJING — Shanghai and Beijing are becoming new lands of opportunity for recent American college graduates who face unemployment nearing double digits at home.

Even those with limited or no knowledge of Chinese are heeding the call. They are lured by China’s surging economy, the lower cost of living and a chance to bypass some of the dues-paying that is common to first jobs in the United States.

"I’ve seen a surge of young people coming to work in China over the last few years," said Jack Perkowski, founder of Asimco Technologies, one of the largest automotive parts companies in China.

"When I came over to China in 1994, that was the first wave of Americans coming to China,” he said. “These young people are part of this big second wave."

Read On

Over the past couple months, I've talked a number of times on this blog about my apprehension about returning to the States at this particular time (I think I laid out a lot of the reasons well in a comment on this post). Qian and I know that this is a terrible time to be leaving China and going to America. But at the same time, it's something we really have to do right now.

In a selfish way, it angers me that some of the brightest minds in America, and the rest of the world, are now focusing their attention on China. I want to, in a way, keep the country "mine" and want to have my unique experience of being in China for more than three years stay a really remarkable thing.

But, of course, this is a ridiculous feeling for me to have. I'd be a fool to think that intelligent people from around the globe wouldn't want to come to China to take advantage of the situation that is being presented right now. And in another way, China is going to be a much better place the more that foreigners come here and the more exposed its people get to the rest of the world. The benefits of foreigners coming to China now will affect both the country and myself positively in the future, I feel.

So, overall, this article above and hearing about western people finding success in China are good things. It's just that reading stories about westerners becoming quasi-economic refugees and leaving the States when I'm a few days away from heading back to America gives me some conflicting feelings.

Anyone who's read my blog with any frequency the past few months knows about my disillusionment with a lot of the aspects of American life and about how I feel that the economic crisis is not a little blip on the ever climbing path of unlimited and unrestrained growth. I have serious concerns about the direction America is headed and particularly about what Qian and I are going to do with ourselves upon our return.

Saying all that, I'm confident that, despite the bleak economic scene in America, we are going to end up being alright.

A week or two ago, Qian's parents, Qian, and I got together for a formal dinner where I, essentially, asked for her hand in marriage. At that time, Qian's dad grilled me a bit about what our plans are and how we're going to survive in America. I feel like my response was one of my all-time most awesome uses of Chinese ever (her dad, of course, does not speak English).

He told me that Qian is there only child and that they are worried about her being on the other side of the planet in a country with a struggling economy. I assured him that I'm strong enough and resourceful enough to both take care of Qian and provide her a decent life in America. I used my life in China as an analogy. I asked him to remember the first time I met him a year and a half ago and how crap my Chinese was and how much I didn't understand about China and its customs. I then talked about where I'm at now both with my Chinese and with my general knowledge of how China works. I pointed out to him that I'm now a manager with ten people working underneath me at the school I work at and have done a good job at adjusting to life in China. I told him that I will get things done in America and will do them well.

After I finished my minute or two of talking, he flashed me a huge smile, stuck out his hand, and said "OK!" We then gave each other a very firm hand shake. Apparently I'd convinced him that I'm 厉害 enough to marry his daughter. That conversation and the look on his face throughout the conversation are things I'll never forget.

The things I said to him were all strong statements and ones that I'm going to have to back up. I'm confident I can though.

Qian and I are about to 逆流而上, yet we are committed to living in America for at least two years (when she can receive a green card) and possibly much longer if things are going well. We're both a combination of nervous and excited. Us going to America is scary and it is a gamble. But I truly believe that we're about to embark upon a fantastic journey.