I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts—far more than I do watching TV these days.  There are so many good podcasts out there dealing with so many specialised topics.  The podcasts I regularly view or listen to include Diggnation, NBC Nightly News (nice to able to do this in England), Scott Hanselman’s  “Hanselminutes”  (along with DotNetRocks to help me keep up with the .Net tech industry), and the new 37 Signals Podcast.  From time to time, I’ll add or remove other podcasts based on what I’m interested at the time.

There are a lot of podcasts out there to help you learn Chinese.  A few years ago I sampled loads of them and even subscribed to a few.  Most of them were too much on the beginners side for my liking (I’m not counting the news broadcasts in full-speed, faster than fast, Mandarin).  Most of them were very dry and not much different than listening to a short Pimsler Basic Chinese Course lesson each day.  “Today’s lesson: Should we bring an umbrella because of the rain?”

So a few weeks ago I took another look at the Chinese learning podcasts out there and found one that I now include among my favourites.  It’s called Popup Chinese.  The Popup Chinese podcasts gives 3 lessons a week at Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced level which each last between 5 and 10 minutes in length.

The dialogs in the lessons are really what differentiate the lessons from all the other ones out there. Here are a few examples of the lessons they’ve had in the past few weeks:

• How to Start a Business in China – Dialogue between a school principal and a child’s parents about how their child has started the other children with gambling and sniffing glue.
• Performance Anxiety – A dialogue between a performer on an American Idol type show and the judges.
• How to Defuse a Bomb – A bomb is about to go off and a former policeman comes to the rescue but is not sure which wire to cut.

Each lesson is pretty funny and irreverent.  Even with some vocab that you will never use, there is a lot of very good instruction on grammar and common speech.

The show is presented by two American and one Chinese teacher in Beijing. 

It’s a great podcast.  If you are past the beginner stages and into the intermediate and advanced stages of Chinese learning, you should check it out.

I’ve been back for two days and am finally getting over the jet lag from the business trip to China.

In Shanghai and Dalian, I met with 9 software companies in an effort to find more offshore partners for Overpass.  I learned a lot from the companies I visited.  They ranged in size from a few companies with thousands of developers to companies with only two developers. 

Some of the software companies were located in large software parks with state of the art facilities.  A couple were located in residential-area office buildings far from the centre of Shanghai. 

There is definitely a lot that China can offer the software offshoring world—in fact, they already are.  On this trip, I was also advised to look at Sichuan, Chengdu, and Nanjing as some other destinations.

I also met with some expats in the area who gave me a great deal of insight into the software development situation in these cities.

I came home with piles of notes to record and thoughts to put down before they evaporate.  It’s been busy the past few days—so this post is pretty brief. 

It was a great trip and I am totally in awe of the hospitality I was shown there.  I thank everyone who showed me around, showed me their companies, and generally made me feel very welcome.

I’d also like to recommend the China-Britain Business Council (CBBC) who set up the meetings for me.  If your looking to get into China, give them a call.

Now, the real work begins.

I’m sitting on a plane from Shanghai to Dalian for my next set of meetings with software developers in China.  I haven’t blogged in a while.  This is a small plane and there is no entertainment.  This is the perfect time.

I’ve spent the last 5 days in Shanghai.  It was my first time to the city and I, like most people generally, am very impressed with the size of it.  Shanghai is huge!  There are so many people and it makes London look tiny.

The Expo is less than six months away and there is a lot of pride that it is being held there.  The Expo logo is everywhere.  I hope to return in the summer when it is held.

I stayed in a tiny room at the Rayfont Shanghai Xuhui Hotel.  I wouldn’t recommend it, but it wasn’t too bad.  My room was so small, I could see every part of from any angle.  The shower and toilet were separated from the rest of the bedroom by a clear sliding glass door.  Luckily I was by myself or I would have look away when someone used the toilet.  The internet was slow.  When I paid the expensive price for the breakfast buffet in the hotel, I could get bacon, eggs, crinkle cut chips, and spaghetti.  However, I was on the 31st floor of my building (the hotel has several tall buildings) and had a nice view of the city.  I even watched a thunderstorm roll in over Shanghai, which mixed with the lights of the evening, was strangely beautiful.

I got around mostly by taxi but took the metro when time permitted.  I felt much more comfortable on this trip to China than I did on my first trip in August.  I tried to get by on Mandarin as much as possible and many very hospitable people helped me around.  Generally, everyone pretty much found my Mandarin to be amusing.  I’m really glad I can speak it—there are many people (especially older people) that I would not have been able to talk to at all unless I could do it in Chinese.  This was important, since travelling by myself got pretty lonely.

Most of my days were spent in meetings.  I met with 6 software companies in Shanghai—ranging from huge companies to very tiny ones.  It’s been a very educational experience. Most of the time, I spoke with General Managers and chairmen, but I really enjoyed getting a chance to talk with people on a technical level.   All the companies were very hospitable and I made some new friends.  Some people even read this blog before my visit which was nice.

I didn’t bring a good camera and mostly took videos of everything I saw.  The trip was for business rather than sight-seeing.

The flight attendant on this plane just announced that the temperature in Dalian is below zero right now.  It was hot and muggy when I arrived in Shanghai on Saturday.  I’m looking forward to Dalian.

In Dalian, I’m going to meet with a few more companies and a few friends.  I’m looking forward to the trip.  Dalian, I hear, is big in outsourcing but mainly focuses on Japan and Russia.  They don’t do much business with the West.  Still, I’m eager to see what they are like and discuss some things with them. 

Hmmm. Adventures in software development.  Who would have thought it would be this exciting.

Sorry if this post is all over the place.  It’s been a long day.

I went to China for the first time in August (after 20 years of it being the one place I wanted to see more than any other).  That was for a family holiday in Beijing.  I had a fantastic time and was able to practice using Mandarin more than I ever have before.

Next week, I will be in both Shanghai and Dalian for business.  I have several meetings lined up and I am very interested in seeing the up-and-comers in the software development market.

Shanghai is the fastest growing city in the world.  I’m really looking forward to seeing it.  I suppose there will be a lot of construction in preparation for the World Expo next year.

Dalian is a place I’ve been wanting to see for the past few years as it has a vibrant software outsourcing market.

I’m spending a lot of time this week preparing and am really looking forward to the trip.

Exciting times.

One of the things I’ve heard about China before arriving was that the English translations I would see on signs and literature might not be the best use of English.  While in Beijing, we saw lots of examples of signs that were just funny.  In the pool area of our hotel is a sign that says “Slip and fall down carefully”.

While at the Beijing Amusement Park, most of the rides included Alcoholism as one of the symptoms you might have to prevent you from going on a ride (“You must not ride this if you suffer from Heart problems, pregnancy, or alcoholism.”  I kept imagining recovering alcoholics staying off these rides in case they caused a relapse.

Most of the Westerners we saw in Beijing were not English speakers (or at least not as a first language).  We heard people speaking Russian, French, and Swedish . . . but all the signs that were translated, were shown in Chinese and English.  My son pointed out to me, when he saw a sign that said to turn off you cell phone instead of mobile phone, that they were specifically translated into American English.

Some of the signs were okay, but so many were either vague (a sign along a river bank says “Please away from the water”) or complicated (the instructions for how to pay for food in the Food Republic food court at the APM shopping centre on Wanfujing street is impossible to read).  Some are intentionally cute and funny, like a sign in the Olympic village that says “The Grass is smiling at you”.

This is often referred to as Chinglish.  The BBC ran story while we were still over there with several other photos of strange Chinglish signs.  The story is here.

Outside the Forbidden City (on the East Gate) is a set of posh toilets.  (The only reason I call them posh is because it costs 1 yuan –about 10p– to use them.  The sign above the doors in Chinese says that it’s the room for men to urinate in.  But, here greeting you as you enter one of China’s most revered treasures, is my favourite sign of all:

The kids love saying it, now.

Of all the pictures I was going to take in Beijing, I was most looking forward to the one of me standing in front of the Mao portrait at Tiananmen Square. Everyone gets that picture.  I’ve seen it in books so often—with it’s bold Chinese characters on the read wall behind.  This picture was going to be even better than one standing on the Great Wall.

Well, wouldn’t you know it?  The entire time we were in Beijing (two whole weeks!), several of the monuments in Tiananmen were covered in scaffolding.  In this picture on the right, you can’t even see the “Peoples Republic of China” characters because they are behind green scaffolding.

I kind of felt like Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Vacation when he drives cross country to Wally’s World to find out that it’s closed.  I wonder what tourists to New York thought in the eighties when the Statue of Liberty was in scaffolding for months while they refurbished it for the 1986 anniversary.

The 60th Anniversary of the PRC is taking place next month, so they must be getting ready for that.  Even the Monument to the People’s Heroes in the square was covered in scaffolding.

It wasn’t too bad at night, you could still see the characters when they were illuminated.

Despite all the maintenance, the square was packed every day we went (we found ourselves back at the square about 4 times in total).

I mentioned in the earlier post that I was surprised by the number of Chinese tourists.  For some reason, I expected all the tourists to be from the west.  But most of the tourists were from around China making a once in a lifetime trip to see their capital.  It’s no different than the tourists in the States who make the cross-country trip to Washington DC.  I’ve been living in England so long I forgot what is was like being in a big country.  In fact, the Chinese tourists had more reason to be visiting than I did, I guess.  They weren’t put off by the maintenance work at all.

Another site that was closed was the Science and Technology Museum.  We took a taxi across town the visit the museum, but when we arrived (and our taxi left), we found that it was closed for a month for renovations.  There were several ‘unofficial’ taxi drivers swarming around like vultures in the front of the museum trying to get us to take their taxis to another site like the Beijing Aquarium.  We stood there, not sure what to do—but I was sure I didn’t want to watch fish at an aquarium.  I noticed a man with a young boy who seemed to have made the same mistake we did and was trying to decide where to go next.  He was being hounded by the drivers just like us.  I walked over to the man and asked him where he was going next.  He seemed surprised that I was trying to talk to him in Chinese—but I was obviously not a driver and not trying to sell him anything.  He told me that they were going to find the underground train and go to the Military Museum.  I asked if we could follow them.  We had only been taking taxis until then, so it sounded fun.  The drivers were annoyed, but we all walked off.

We walked with this man’s family (himself, his wife, and their son) and another family they were friends with for about a mile and a half to the underground station.  They were visiting from Inner Mongolia.  We talked about school out there and they were very interested in our 3 children.  They didn’t speak any English—but they told me their son was learning English in school (he didn’t want to show me what he knew).

There were two boys in their group.  I asked if they were brothers.  One boy’s mother told me that they couldn’t be brothers because China has too many people.  They could only have one child.  I knew this, of course, so I felt a little stupid.  Then I asked if they were cousins.  No, she told me, they are not cousins but only friends.  The one child rule came in in 1979.  I realised that China would not have siblings, but I never considered that this would one day mean no cousins, no uncles, no aunts . .

It took us ages getting to the subway station—the other Dad, being a tourist too, really had no idea where the station was but shared my keen sense of direction.  We stopped and asked a lot of passers-by for directions.

The subway train we rode was very crowded.  The Beijing subway at 2pm was like the Central Line at 5pm.  It took a couple of hours, but when we finally arrived at the Military Museum . . . it was closed.  It was Monday, and the museum is always closed on Monday.  But I didn’t mind.  This was the only real time we were able to have a lengthy conversation with a Chinese family.  If the Science Museum had been open, we wouldn’t have been able meet them at all.

It was a great experience.

I returned from 2 weeks holiday in Beijing just a few days ago.  I’m still suffering from some food poisoning I picked up over there, so I’m not entirely at 100%.

There’s so much to talk about Beijing.  It’s difficult to know where to start.  I’ll probably have more than one post on this trip, so I hope it doesn’t bore anyone.

I spent most of the time speaking Mandarin.  I’ve been studying it for so long that it often felt odd listening to so many people speak it too.  A lot of people out there speak a tiny amount of English but a surprising amount spoke none.  When I spoke Mandarin, people seemed to really appreciate it and enjoyed having conversations on various subjects.

For this trip to China, we went as a family.  It was good for the kids to see another country and experience what another culture is like.

I have three sons- aged 4 to 11.  This turned a lot of heads.  Everywhere we went, people would comment on our children or we would hear them commenting to each other (“三个儿子”) about how many kids we have.  Many Chinese people would stop and tell me how strong my family is.  Some told me about the one-child policy and we did feel very guilty for bringing three.  Some asked me how many we were allowed to have in England.

When I imagined going to Beijing, I imagined going to Epcot Centre.  I figured that since the Olympics last year, the place would be entirely Westernised.  If I wanted to see “Real China”, Beijing might not be the place to do it.  I expected to see mostly Westerners and everything would cater to us.  But I was wrong.  We saw very few Westerners at all.  The ones we did see were Russians.  I saw no Western kids at all.  Most of the people we spoke with were tourists from around China—making a trip to their nation’s capital.  So, we, a family of 5, were the object of much interest.

In our first day in Beijing, while walking along the Wangfujing shopping street, we were frequently stopped by Chinese people asking to take their pictures with us.  I noticed a lot of other people took out pictures without asking at all—like you would take pictures of animals in the zoo.  Once a few people posed for pictures with us, people started to swarm and everyone wanted to add us to their photo albums. Some people wanted pictures with only the kids.  Some young ladies wanted their pictures taken with me alone (the extra weight doesn’t matter in China, I guess).  For a while, I thought they might have mistaken us for someone famous (like that guy last year shouting “I’m not Michael Phelps” while everyone crowded around him).  It was a lot of fun, actually.  We felt like we were famous.  It was cool—on the first day!

Everywhere we went, we would be stopped at least once for a photo opportunity with someone.  We posed with everyone—kids, parents, teenagers, and a family even made their old grandmother sit down next to us on a curb in Tiananmen Square to take a picture.  After a week, whenever someone would walk up to us carrying a camera, we would start to pose.

After a few days, my younger boys started to protest and make faces when people took their pictures.  We tried to explain how this is not polite and that they should smile, but it really did become overwhelming after a while.  The standard pose for pictures in China seems to be the two-finger peace symbol—so that’s how we posed.

Once, while riding a hired boat in the lake at Beihai Park, a family followed around the lake in their boat for about 20 minutes until we stopped and let them circle around us to take a picture.  We sat in our boat—everyone making a peace symbol and smiling.

All over China, people are returning from their holiday to Beijing and showing their friends pictures of us.  Weird.

Even when we weren’t being photographed, we were being watched.  We had many meal where at least one person from the next table was turned around in their chair watching us continuously.  I would look at them, just to acknowledge that I knew they were staring and said Ni Hao but they would continue to watch us like we were a show for them.  After a few days, I got used to this.  But, if you have kids—especially more than one—you know that you sometimes need to raise your voice (“Don’t pick that up off the floor!”, “Just don’t touch him, okay?”, “Whoever is kicking had better stop!”) and it was difficult to do this when you have several eyes on you.

We spent two weeks there.  We saw Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Olympic Village and several other sites.  I’ll write some more on what it was like in future posts.

I plan on returning to China (to Dalian) in a few months to meet with some software companies.  But for now, It’s nice to be home.

I started learning Chinese when I was 18 years old.

I didn’t choose it, but it was assigned to me.  I’ve been using it here and there for the past 19 years.  I occasionally start up conversations with Chinese people I meet on the street (sometimes to the embarrassment of my family) and try to read Voice of America articles online from time to time.  A few years ago, I paid a tutor to meet me during my lunchtimes once a week so I could practice speaking and reading Mandarin.

photo credit: nuomi

It is a skill that is not critical to my job, but I try to maintain anyway.  A few years ago, I was able to translate (surprisingly well) for a group of Chinese visitors who were involved in a joint venture with the company I was working for.  Last year, I met with an official at the Chinese Embassy in London where we discussed software offshoring for almost an hour—entirely in Mandarin.

But I’ve never been to China.

I’ve always intended to go, but there was always a reason it was not possible.  Most of the time, it was too expensive to go.  Then, with small kids, it was just too difficult.  Sometimes, the scarce holiday time was used to go back to the States instead—to spend some long overdue time with my family there.  Even this year, I had scheduled a trip to Dalian, but had to cancel because of problems with my UK visa being transferred to my new American passport.  Sometimes it feels as if I will never make it there.

Tomorrow, I’m going to Beijing.  I’m very excited.  This is the one place in the world I’ve always wanted to go.

There are still possible obstacles in the way.  Already, the travel agent has given me problems about the fact that the first name on my plane ticket is not spelled exactly as it is on my passport.  “I’m sorry, we can’t change it now.  Even though it is an E-Ticket, you either have to rebook the flight and lose all of your money, or hope that the Customs and Excise people are reasonable and let you through.”  Even though my visa and passport are in order, my trip may be cut short due to bureaucracy around the ticket.

I’m also concerned about the swine flu.  I’ve been reading all over the web about people being put into quarantine for 7 days in China because someone on the flight had a temperature.  From what I’ve read, someone will board the plane upon landing and take everyone’s temperature with a temperature gun.  If someone who sits around you has a temperature, you could be spending time in quarantine.  I thought about waiting until Swine flu is over, but who knows when that will be?  There will be another reason next year not to go—and the year after that.

When I was first learning the language, we had Chinese teacher who would talk about the streets of Beijing.  I can remember trying to say something I considered complicated in Chinese—stumbling over the words—tones all wrong—and I’m sure it sounded horrible.  He would look up at the ceiling while considering what I had said.  To be polite, he would always say, “It wasn’t exactly right, but if you were on the streets of Beijing, they would understand what you just said.”  Well, we’ll see.

Last year, when I met with the official at the Chinese Embassy, I mentioned that I started learning Chinese in 1991—soon after the Tiananmen massacre (“Note: NEVER mention the Tiananmen Square massacre to someone from China!”).  I told him that I planned on visiting China one day, but wasn’t sure when.  He looked at me and said, “Eric, China has changed so much since then.  It’s completely different.” I’ve been watching the news and know that China is growing quickly.  But, when he said that to me, I felt kind of sad—like I was letting it slip away from me.  In the movie “Dances with Wolves”, Kevin Costner’s character chooses to go to the frontier so he could see it before it is gone.  I feel like I need to go to China before it changes further.  I want to see China while it is still China.

I hope I’m not too late.

Last month, I was supposed to go to China.  I had planned to attend the CISIS conference in Dalian. This is one of the largest technology fairs in China for IT Service companies.  I had the flight and hotels booked and registered with the conference. I worked with the UK Trade and Investment office to set up some private meetings with Chinese software companies, too.

photo credit: ** Maurice **

The problem I had was that my American passport had less than 6 months time left on it– a China visa requires more than 6 months remaining on a passport.  The Chinese embassy also wouldn’t give me a visa from the UK unless I had proof of permanent UK residence in my new passport.

I had 6 weeks to get everything sorted before the conference.  But I had to (1) get a new American passport from the US, (2) get my UK residency visa transferred to it by the UK Home Office, and (3) get a visa from the Chinese embassy.  The US got me the new passport in three weeks, but the UK Home Office took 5 weeks to transfer the residency visa over (I tried to speed it up, but bureaucracy is bureaucracy and no one could help).  I had to cancel all my travel plans and lost a few hundred quid in the process.  It’s not easy being an expat sometimes.

So, now I’m making new plans for a new China trip.  I’ve missed the CISIS conference, but still plan to visit some Chinese software companies out there sometime in the next few months.  Now that I have a brand new US passport and my UK visa seal is all up-to-date, I’ve sent my visa application to the Chinese embassy in London.  This time, I won’t make any travel plans until I get the documents in hand.  I’m going to wait until after the summer holidays to book any business meetings out there.

According to the Chinese London Embassy website, the visa process for China should take only 4 days.  They have a site called VisaForChina.org.uk which is dedicated to issuing Visas from the UK (due to the large amount of visa requests they get).  The site has some problems.  The English wording is obscure in some places.  It also has a visa application wizard you can fill out online, but it crashes on the first page in Firefox and gets all the way to the last page in IE before it displays it all back to you as null fields and errors on the form (better to download the pdf and fill it out by hand).  But, it is a helpful site.

I’ve had a few people from my last job ask why I’m not in China yet.  This is why.  Things are up in the air now, but I’m enjoying the sunshine of the summer.

I’ll keep you posted, of course.

Today I attended the half-day “Doing Business in China and Hong Kong” seminar given by the Southeast UK Trade & Investment organisation.  It was a decent presentation which discussed some of the aspects of doing business with China.  It focused more on Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hong Kong than on the Northeaster areas I’m interested in, but it was very interesting all the same.

My trip to Dalian was supposed to happen a few weeks ago, but do to the bureaucracy of the UK Home Office, I had to cancel it.  I’m planning to make the trip within in the next few months.