Archive for October, 2006

Do you want eggs with that?

Sunday, October 22nd, 2006

The Chinese are at least as crazy about value shopping as the Americans. Every supermarket has its own rewards card that automatically deducts some discount when you shop. Many shops also have promotions that they give you a free soda for each 50 Yuan you spend. However, the most popular thing here in China is bundling. It starts with a Coke and a Sprite bundled together or two packs of yoghurt and a glass bowl. I also have seen a carton of milk with a yoghurt and so on. The most insane form of bundling I discovered recently is this one:

Belive it or not. Pepsi + 7up + eggs. Crazy Chinese ;-)

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I am taking Chinese classes again

Wednesday, October 18th, 2006

Recently I have been quite busy. The foudation that provides my scholarship demands a report about my life in China. That was actually much more work then I expected. But now it is done and I just sent it away. So now I have some more time for things I have postponed for too long. One of these things is taking Chinese lessons again. Since I came to Shanghai I have not really improved my Chinese anymore, so that needs to be changed. A colleague recommendet Masterchina to me. I just had my first lesson on Monday and I think they are quite good. The best thing is that it is private tuition, so they adjust the lessons just to my needs and my pace. So I hope my Chineselevel is going to go up by quite a bit in the next few weeks. Maybe then I can blog in Chinese ;-)

Now I really need to finish the last few episodes of the 5th season 24. The weekend I hope we finally make it to Putuo Shan. I tell you later how it was.

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German Consulate National Day Party

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

Yesterday the German consulate in Shanghai invited for the celebration of German National Day. Actually that day was already on October 3rd, but since that day collides with the Chinese National Day Golden Week, it was celebrated yesterday.

It was a really nice event in the garden of the Radisson XingGuo with lots of good German food, drinks and a live swing band. Maybe about 1000 people were there and we also met some colleagues from Siemens, my fellow HNP colleagues as well as some people we alread knew from the openBC event two weeks ago. So free food and drinks payed by German taxes, what can you ask more ;-) (Actually it was payed by sponsoring German companies)

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Back from Wuhan

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006
Yesterday we got back from Wuhan, so I can blog again. There we did not have Internet access. It was a real fun week. The first day we did some sightseeing to Wuhan’s most famous sight, the Yellow Crane Tower. That is a quite impressive 6 story high pagoda. Acutally from the outside it looks like 6 floors but inside are really 9 floors, which resembles the two most lucky numbers in China.


Yellow Crane Tower by night

The next we took off to Wudang Shan, where the famous Wudang Temple is on the mountaintop. Some of you might know it from the movie "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon". I really hoped to meet Zhang Ziyi there, but unfortunately I didn’t ;-). Instead I got interviewed by a camera team from the local TV station about travel experiences.


Me and the camera team

We spend there 2 days exploring all the Temples. Wudang Shan is quite a huge mountain area and you need to take the bus to get around. I read that the whole mountain covers 400km.


Wudang Shan

Back in Wuhan we spend the Mid-Autumn-Festival with familiy according to Chinese tradition. It was really nice and we had some good dinner with my wifes parents, grandparents, Uncles and Aunts. On Saturday, we went shopping the whole day. Here in China they have these promotions around National Day, that you buy for 188 Yuan and you get a 150 Yuan cupon back. So using this we bought stuff for almost 4,500 Kuai, which equals roughly 450€, but only spend around 200€. Quite nice, and we bought a lot of things.
Sunday was our flight back to Shanghai. Actually we chose the flight that we would be back home for the Formula 1 race, but, Murphys law, the flight was just delayed by 1h. So by the time I got home, the race was just over. So I had to see Schumi’s engine blow today in the moring news. What a huge shame that is. But hope is the last thing to die…

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