Transport in Beijing
In order to get to work at 8.30am I must get up at 6.30am. Fonterra China is located in the COFCO Building
on Chang An Street (CBD) and my apartment is at the far east side of Beijing. There are two ways to commute to work: (1) take the bus to the nearest subway entrance Hu Jia Lou Station, catch Line 10, then change to Line 1 subway and get off the closest subway station to work, Jian Guo Men station; or (2) take the bus to a further subway station (Si Hui station) and ride Line 1 subway until I reach Jian Guo Men station; or (3) take the bus (number 126) and ride it all the way till a bus stop called Yong An Li West. The landlord told me these options, and suggested me to try the bus (because apparently this bus route is not too congested in the morning). So I got up at 6.30am, left my apartment at 7am and got onto the bus at about 7.15am. The bus ride is 1RMB (haha, so cheap in comparison to NZ buses, not exactly the best public transport in NZ). I had to stand the whole ride and experienced what 'FULL CABIN' means.. the bus is just so pacted with people!!! There are over 4 million cars in Beijing (Lol, the whole population in NZ is just over 4 million) for a population of 18 million, therefore, quite easy to assume that buses and taxis and bikes are the most common and cheapest commute methods. The bus from outside my apartment residential area is Qian Nian Road to the Yong An Li Road West was about 45 minutes. Yong An Li Road West stop is at the intersection of Chang An Street (main street of BJ) and Chao Yao Road North, it is directly outside Xiu Shui Shopping Centre, which I think it's called Silk Market. I went through the underpass and got onto the south side of Chang An Street and started walking towards the West. According to my landlord, the COFCO building where I'll be working at should be 100 metres away.
I was walking in my heels and formal business wear for at least a good 10 minutes but still don't see the building where I'm supposed to go to. While I'm walking, I saw a lot of locals standing on the streets, they all wear this red-fabric-printed-with-yellow-writings thing on their left arm, it's a very common thing in China when you have a certain role in the public and by wearing that it symbolises what you're doing and people know who to go to, it's somewhat like the vest that I see in New Zealand when people wear and showing that they're the patrol etc. The wiritings on their arm shows that they're the patrol for the residential area that I'm walking by so I went up to ask them how to get to COFCO Plaza. To my surprise, it is infact very far away from bus stop I got off from, it's like 30 minutes walk from the bus stop to COFCO plaza. There I go, walked for 30 minutes in heels and formal business wear until I reach the building, but looking at the building now: it's all worth it.
Chinese vs. NZ differences
Fonterra office is located in Level 14 of the COFCO Plaza, entry from Building B. I won't write too much about work, (1) company privacy, (2) first day is really just about sorting HR related issues. Few things that did happen relating to work though:
1. Bank account and Chinese ID card
I need to set up a bank account for my salary from Fonterra, however, China Construction Bank requires my Chinese ID card to be able to open up a bank account (note: I still hold my Chinese passport with my NZ permanent residence); so I thought, hmmmm might as well apply for my Chinese ID card, makes my life easier and don't have to carry my passport everywhere....but then when I called the police station to ask for information to a temporary ID card they told me that I can only apply for ID card at the province that I am registered in. I was born and registered in the Guangdong province, hence I have to go back to Guangzhou to apply for my ID card, or I have to find another bank. I tried asking a foreign bank (e.g. HSBC) and the result is that I can use my Chinese passport to open an account, BUT for a personal account I must have 100,000RMB in the account untouched. This is just ridculous.
2. Chinese resturant culture
During lunch time my manager took another colleague and myself to a resturant located at the bottom of the COFCO Plaza building. It's a restaurant branded for its soy milk and spices. While we're walking pass other restaurants, there are some waitresses and waitors standing outside the door and promoting their restaurant to us. They're yelling things like "come and try our food, if you don't try you'll regret, if you don't try you'll never know how good our food is" etc. It's really quite new for me to see how waitresses will stand outside the restaurant and basically yell at you with promotional messages.
We had one large bowl of fish and pickles soup, fried vegies and sausages, spicy chicken and vegies, white rice and hot SOY MILK for drink, LOL. I'm not a soy bean fan (that includes tofu and soy milk) but the soy milk was actually pretty good! The fresh soy bean taste is still there but bearable, and it's definitely healthy and nice for a cold summer day. The waitress in the restaurant who ordered for us holds a cellphone looking thing, when we were ordering, I found out it was a menu-ordering-machine. Basically when we decided on dish we'll tell her and she'll key the code into that machine, and the kitchen will get the order! I must say this is definitely more environmentall friendly (less tress) but god knows how this machine will be disposed off (maybe worse for the environment?)
Another experience from this lunch about Chinese restaurant culture is when we finish meal. My manager called for the waitress to get the bill, the waitress came with the bill and getting a credit card off my manager. Then suddenly, a guy from another table started to yell across the tables to talk to our waitress and also demands for the bill. It's very common in China for customers to be calling out for watiress/waitor (Fu Wu Yuan) when they wish and the customers will just start speaking as they wish. In New Zealand this may be considered as quite rude, firstly how can someone just yell across the tables like this, and secondly the waitress is serving us not them so she should really concentrate on us. I don't mind either, either culture have its on 'personality' and 'norm'; there is really no way to say 'this is wrong' or 'this is right'. So really I just aim to write my experiences down rather than judging them.
Barack Obama in Beijing?!
In the late afternoon, my manager came back into the office and told all of us that US president Obama is in Beijing atm and part of the roads are completely sealed off. This resulted in extra congestion in other roads and extra police force patrolling on the streets. Beijing at night time is really beautiful, lights everywhere, shinning, (and light pollution, LOL).
Dinner in the Park
My cousin called me this afternoon and said she and her fiance will take me out for dinner. I've never met him before and it just sounds so good to be able to go out and have a better look at Beijing night life. The restaurant is called Xiao Wang's Restaurant , the english name really doesn't sound like anything special, but in fact this is the most interesting restaurant I've ever seen. It's located in the middle of a park called Ri Tan Park. My cousin and I met up at a subway station and started walking towards the restaurant. The restaurant was own by a foreigner, and because it is very close to the area where most embassies are located in Beijing, therefore every table in the restaurant have at least one non-asian person, or even just a table full of Westeners. 
The dishes are traditional Chinese food but I must mention about their menu. The menu is printed like a pamphlet but with two long pieces of red wood on the outside; perhaps the photo will show better. 
The restaurant has 3 floor levels, floor holds a few tables. The rooftop is also a level for customers however it's closed due to the cold winter weather. My cousin's fiance told me that this restaurant have the best peiking duck and is a must for me to try. I testify what he said. The peiking duck is simply amazing, it's crispy yet not dry; the amount of fat inside the crispy duck skin is just about right, not too oily and leaves a really good after taste.
The waitor that served us is a real Beijing-er. His accent told us that. When he saw us talking about Peiking duck he started discussin with us about the process of making Peiking ducks. In Quan Ju De (the most famous restaurant specialises in Peiking Duck) is in a building with 3 level floor plans. The first and second floor are for citizens / residentials / locals; the ducks for these customers are usually made by the younger chefs (with less experience) and uses another stove. The third level is for special guests like government officials, special foreigner guests, politicians, MNC businessmen, country representatives etc. The ducks for this level is made by senior chef and uses a special stove. He also told us that Peiking ducks in autumn and winter time are the best looking ones coming out from the stove. This is because during the summer time, when the temperature is too high, duck oil will come out from the duck skin pores resulting the special marinated coatings to dilute and drop off the ducks, therefore peiking duckn in the summer time have lighter looking coating and less flavouring. This does sound logical but I wonder if customers knows about this, then wouldn't the chef? Then shouldnt the chefs already have 'contingency plans' to improve this situation? Like having a temperature controlled kitchen to avoid overheating of the ducks? Just my thoughts.
During dinner we talked about a few things and comparisons of Beijing and Auckland. For example, we talked about buying properties in these cities. My cousin is looking into buying a property (apartment) but they really have to look outside the central areas of Beijing, like at least outside the 4th ring. The average price at these areas is around 35,000RMB per square metre. They asked me about prices in Auckland as well, to be honest, it's more worth it to buy properties in New Zealand, because you're actually buying the land with the property, unlike in China you're really just buying the apartment block and sharing the land with the rest of the residents in the same building.
After dinner I went and met up with the rest of my friends. They're at Chao Wai Soho, it's a chain shopping centre by Soho, quite interesting but most stores were closed by the time I get there (around 9.30pm). We were in this little cafe called Aster Cafe, its Chinese name means "Horoscope Cafe". It's a little cafe, very decorative and warm.
That's the end of my day. From 6.30am till 11.30pm, one day in Beijing is definitely longer thatn one day in Auckland. That's how I feel now.
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