A taste of Northern California from my viewfinder

[High school students traveling to USA at the Beijing Airport]
My UA flight on July 12, 2008 was fully booked. Among the passengers, about 120 high school students were on board. I sat next to a couple of teachers/chaperons. They were excited and they had long shopping lists. One of them said to the other philosophically, "Let's not buy America to go." Travel and seeing things firsthand without hindrance is a first step to understanding and communication among nations. This is something good to see and I am hopeful to have a peaceful global village.




[The famous BlackBox at Sun's MPK campus]

Well, this might not be the original. It is in front of the MPK12 building, and I suppose that it is for the executive briefing tour. The future of networking, storage, and computing power are all packed in this box, with electricity and network cabled in, and information and heat out. I heard that the Pentagon liked this idea very much.






[Forced Tour at IKEA East Palo Alto]
I just needed to buy a gift certificate for my nephew's LA wedding. And I went in one way and had to quickly do a tour of everything. Here is a shot of a beautifully designed information post. I had to follow the winding road to reach the check-out counter at the end.














[Kaiser Hospital and my annual medical check-up]
I did my blood work and ultrasound a few days before I saw the doctor so that everything would be ready for his assessment. It was good for him to declare that I was good for another 6 months. This shot was at the women's ultrasound floor. Because of "load balancing," I was moved from the regular location to this one. Felt a little out of place at the beginning until I found a few other men there later. Kaiser Hospital at Santa Clara was part of the HMO network I still subscribe to.





[Pruneridge Golf Driving Range, my rare ritual these days]

You must be rusty only doing this driving range practice every 3 or 4 months. I don't even bother to go on the course, because we would hit the balls everywhere and be chased by the next group.














[LA Wedding, all in the family]

Driving down from San Jose to LA is about 6 hours. It was good to see my two sons and my mom again. It was an excuse to have a family reunion. My nephew John got married, the first in that generation. I found my position as uncle was well respected in the scheme of things.







[San Jose RHV airport: biannual flight review]

I did not look too thrilled. I wonder why? My private pilot license requires a biannual flight review to be current. It was one hour of ground instruction and review, and another hour or more air work with a required minimum number of takeoffs and landings. I took this shot in front of the at the RHV airport. It was a lot of mental and physical work to recover from installs and to simulate emergencies.





[Gate of Heaven: my dad and my mom]

My mom is living with my younger sister in Taiwan for the time being. It is her wish to visit the grave site of my dad at Gate of Heaven, a Catholic cemetery in Los Altos, every time she is in northern California. We cut the flowers from our backyard; Michael did a nice job in arranging them.







[Robin and Family in our backyard]

This was a great shot seeing a mother or father robin feeding the young chicks. Our family had a great time seeing this robin family doing their thing in our backyard.









[Century 22 Movie Theater]

I heard in a Toastmaster speech that not having reserved seating for movie tickets in the US was a surprise to Chinese natives. I refreshed my memory on this trip. This dome-shaped structure is a common for movie theaters in the US. We watched "The Dark Knight." This Batman sequel was entertaining and has some interesting philosophical thoughts in it.






[California Living: Castro Street in Mountain View, luncheon in outdoor cafe setting]

This Castro street is becoming a symbol of California living these days. California has nice weather with beautiful blue skies most of the year. It is dry, and outdoor living is feasible and enjoyable. Although California is lagging behind in terms of East Coast high culture and sport teams, and is not well known for public education K through 12, the weather has attracted many new immigrants in the last two centuries. In the boom days of the Silicon Valley, many domestic transplants came to this state as well.



[Police riding Segway in Mountain View, California]

I saw this in LA airport, but I did not have chance to take a picture. This time I used my iPhone to record the scene. It is like child's play to me. A little wild and unthinkable 10 or 20 years ago. The cops need to work more efficiently, I suppose. It is probably more acceptable than seeing them riding on scooters?

Align Your Expectations in Beijing and China

If you are in Beijing in an organized tour group, you'll be ushered around in an air-conditioned bus; you'll be pampered well. You probably won't run into any expectation alignment issues.

This alignment of expectations is a must for people who come to Beijing and China for a longer period of time. First of all, looking like a foreigner could be a double-edged sword. Don't play your foreigner card too hard. As a foreigner, extra courtesy might be extended to you. Yet, you are clearly a target to be ripped off.

The following is a list of my observations after two years in Beijing.

• Taxi driver - Generally, there is no tip expected. Don't expect him/her to come out to open the trunk for you. Load and unload the luggage and suitcases yourselves. Once a while, they do help you. You are in luck when that happens.
• Crossing the Intersection - Don't expect the bus or the car to yield to you even when you have the green/walk signal. Cars can turn right on red, and the drivers normally push their way through whenever they can. Remember that there is no notion of "right of way." You are a meat ball and they are metal; don't insist on this.
• Lights beaming - When a car/bus beams lights at you, especially with increasing speed, it means that you should get out of the way as soon as possible. This is *not* to signal you to go first.
• Using horns - When a car/bus is rushing through, horns are applied generously. Don't get annoyed. Horns are often used to show the displeasure of the drivers as well.
• Cutting in front of you - It is not uncommon in subway/bus lines for people to cut in front of you. You have to adjust a bit; and at the same time, be a little aggressive, otherwise, you might have trouble getting on.
• Let people out first? - Normally, people having no such courtesy of letting you out first before they barge in. This applies to elevators, buses, and subways. If you are the last one or close to the last one, be aggressive to move out early. Position yourself in a crowded situation when you are reaching your destination; you might have trouble getting out in the last minute. "Excuse me" does not help much in the last minute, and it is all right to move close to the door when the bus/subway is approaching your destination. Signal that you wish to swap positions, and stop when someone tells you that he/she is getting out too. Sounds like a bubble sort algorithm?
• Yielding their seats to you - If you have some gray or even some signs of aging, some youngster might yield his/her seat to you. In the city bus, sometimes the bus attendant would point and ask some young person to yield a seat to the senior or needy. He/she sets the civil code in the bus! At times, some young people shamelessly ignore the request or pretend to be ill. Some Americans might be a little offended as they are not ready to be seen as needing special treatment in their 50's. This is quite a contrast between today's Americans and Chinese in their 50's and 60's. Psychologically, many Chinese accept the notion of old age and fragility while their American counterparts perceive themselves completely otherwise.

  It is a pleasant surprise, isn't it? It is a pretty complicated society, you might think, given all the other things you have read so far.

• Crowd control - If you travel during peak weeks of the major holidays, you might be able to witness multi-level queues in and out of train stations. This is unique to China to make sure that people can get out of the stations, and can get into the stations as well. The system is designed not to let people in too early to block others who might need to get in. Chinese do have the expertise to manage and do crowd control during peak weeks of the transportation infrastructure.
• Rushing to get in and out - Going in to a music hall with assigned seating or on a upscale train, people still jostle. There is no real reason to get ahead. People are unconsciously insecure, and want to be ahead of everything habitually. One Tsinghua professor I knew told me of this analogy: When you are hungry for too long, you cannot stop eating when seeing plenty of good food on the table. It is probably a transitional phenomenon from a resource-poor economy to a plenty-for-all economy.

English with a Chinese characteristic - 005

English with a Chinese characteristic - 005
This is the "005" installment of this series.

This one is dedicated to the pronunciation difficulties experienced by many Chinese software professionals I am personally acquainted with.

From my old American housemate Dave in the 1970's, "If you cannot hear the difference, you cannot say it correctly." Find a native speaker or someone with good command of spoken English to work with you on the following examples. Listen very hard for the differences and then try to pronounce them so that you can reflect the differences you heard.

• [Long vowels]
  Try these pairs: Keith and kiss, feast and fist.
  
• [R versus L]
  Try these pairs: liver and river, world and word, war and wall.
  
• [Th versus S]
  Try these pairs: face and faith, think and sink.
  
• [Missing counterpart; there is no v sound in Chinese]
  Try these: very and vibrate.
  

Unlearn these pronunciations that are due to the Pin-yin imprints. Pin-yin is the most common standard for representing Standard Mandarin in the Latin alphabet. The correspondence between letter and sound does not follow any single other language such as English. Many Chinese have to anglicize the Pin-yin alphabet in their early learning to pronounce words accurately in the English language.
For example: c as in cang and cong, q in qing and que, x as in xiang and xue, r as in ren and rang.

I found that the college-educated group manages well the different pronunciations in English and in the Chinese Pin-yin.

Top Five Impressions of My Datong, Shanxi Trip

I took a night hard sleeper to Datong, Shanxi, Thursday, May 29. The hard sleeper train is basically a crowded 3-level bunker bed as opposed to the 2-level more spacious soft sleeper. It was my first time ever on this hard sleeper, and I learned to appreciate the comfort (and the privacy) the soft sleeper offers. Everything is relative. ;-) See the picture of the hard seat train I took to come back Saturday afternoon.

This was KS group's extended team building event at work, and I was quite happy to go with the group. Interacting with the energetic and talented engineers has always been rewarding to my work at Sun's Engineering and Research Institute.

I picked out 7 pictures to go with my top 5 impressions.

[Yungang Grottoes]

This was the first rock-cut architecture site I ever visited. Seeing it is definitely different from seeing them in the pictures and books. This Yungang Grottos has about 1500 years of history and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001. This grotto site was started by the Northern Wei dynasty, ruled by the proto-mongolic tribe called Tuoba. This ethnic group was completely disintegrated and became part of the modern-day Chinese.

This buddha picture on the left is often the picture used for the Yungang Grottos in many post cards and books. The large and small statues in the other picture are quite clever. The small statue actually served as a support piece for the hand of the large statue; without it the hand would be unable to stay in the air.

I have never before visited any grotto in China. I had the impression that access to any of these sites was difficult. I was proved completely wrong as I walked up easily to the grottos. It sort of makes sense, since those early devout religious people and artisans need to access them to do their carvings and worship.

[Hanging Temple]
Built more than 1400 years ago, this temple is unique not only for its location on a sheer precipice but also because it includes Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian elements.

People believe that an ice-based scaffolding was built in winter from the frozen river up, and main treated wooden beams were inserted or wedged into the cliff side. Craftsmen could then work on the rows on beams as a platform when ice melted. Next winter the whole cycle would start over again. The original theory of construction, that ropes from the ridge of the cliff down and into the cliff wall, has been deemed impractical. The latest conjecture on how it was built can be applied to many other similar sheer precipice constructions.

There was an access path that the visitors can take to reach the temple. The passage way inside the temple was quite narrow, and we followed the one-way sign to avoid traffic congestion.

The view from the top was quite awesome, as you can see in this picture on the left. I believe that it would take those monks some time to get used to living up there.

[Hard Seat Train Ride]

It was my first time to take this greenish train. I had an assigned seat. The seating was partitioned asymmetrically by a walkway, with 6 people on one side and 4 on the other side in two rows. There were two small tables between the rows. We played the Chinese version of the "Hearts" (Black Lady) for the most part to kill time. The Chinese name for this is "Egging on the Pig," and the Pig is the "Black Spade Queen." This card has -100 points in the game; the players usually try to get others to take this negative card early.

The trip was a long 6-hour ride and I learned to appreciate the opportunity to lie down on a hard sleeper train. Don't let the good experience of soft sleeper spoil you! Incidentally, I have ridden enough times on the Chinese railways and have seen so many people using this system to move about day and night. The Chinese probably have the most experience in the world in managing large-scale mass transportation systems that move people and goods by railroads.

[Chinese Signage]
Look at this translation "Please Cherish Followers and Trees." This is meant to be "Please Protect Flowers and Trees." There are many translated signs that make you shake your head. This one is not that bad, just incorrect. If you wish to see how hilarious English translations can be, visit the following URL English signage web site. There is a Specially in Chinasection on this web site.

The situation of poorly translated signs is much better in Beijing and other first-tier cities; it gets worse as you move out to the countryside. What's needed is a simple process to allow skilled groups or volunteer organizations to proofread the signs.

[Mao is among the gods]
Seeing what's available on the souvenir stalls always tells me something. This picture showed that Chairman Mao has been elevated to the status of deity. Not only he is historically an important man of his era, his legacy and influence have turned him into a class to be remembered and sometimes to be worshiped.