One more story about last week. I got my first experience sitting in on job interviews with several candidates for a supervisor job at the plant. I never sat in on a job interview in the US so this was a totally new experience for me. The Internet takes a very prominent role in the job search process; people see the job description and submit resumes from all over the country (just like Monster.com). The HR department goes through the resumes and weeds out the bad ones and puts through those that pass muster. We had 6 candidates lined up for interviews. After an interview with someone from HR, followed by Gary, Steve and I would be called in to talk with the candidate (speaking & understanding English is a job qualification). Gary and Helen had completed their assessment in Chinese and we would check him out as well in English. Just one funny thing about this, if the candidate had trouble understanding what we asked in English, we would ask Gary if he could help with the explanation. Now, I was expecting Gary to ask the question in Chinese, makes sense right. Again, it shows how much I know. Gary would repeat the question, pretty much verbatim, in English (of course with the Chinese accent)…..??? I nearly started laughing the first time it happened just because it seemed funny (maybe it’s just me or perhaps Gary was still checking out his English skills). Oddly enough in some cases, he would understand the Chinese English better and be able to answer the question. If there was still a problem, Gary would explain in Chinese. If that happened too many times, it was clear that the candidate was out of the running since they must be able to comprehend English for the job. I also had a hard time with mannerisms; I could not tell if the candidate was nervous about his English language skills or if he was intimidated by the presence of two foreigners asking questions, etc. Some things you can just tell about people from reading their body language seem to be different here and I’ve got to re-learn many of those things as well. I have to change my speaking pace (Tammy wonders why I’m doing my standup routine on Skype, it’s not because I’ve been drinking, it’s because I can take off the shackles and move at my normal pace again…release the hounds!) and mannerisms to be understood and I have to utilize simple words or terms. This is something I know that many of those Thesaurus dweebs out there (and we all know at least one of “those” people) would have a hard time doing since they like to use the big words to show their intellect. Personally, I think they are compensating; like a balding man in the sports car.
Small children seem to really enjoy the foreigner’s. Probably one of every 20 kids will run up and say “Hello”, wave and laugh. If you say Hello back to them, they just laugh like it’s the funniest thing in the world as they scoot away. One young child we walked by on the weekend said “Hello” and later when he rode by us on his bicycle he said “This is my bicycle. Goodbye.” and waved as he passed us (he was on the back of the bicycle and his dad was doing the pedaling). We will get a second looks from about 1/3 of the people riding by on scooters or bicycles (they will turn their head and look at us as they go by, not just a glance but a 2-3 second stare which around here could be the difference between getting home on the bike or ending up under a truck). It’s not a look to the side but watching the entire time they pass by, it’s almost an indicator of where they are from in China. People used to seeing the “white devils” don’t give us much thought but those from less modernized areas of the country will always watch you with curiosity. It’s not uncomfortable, nothing threatening; they just don’t consider the same things rude that we do and so they stare. We’ll see the same thing on the bus ride, we’ll pass by the buses and some will almost seem shocked to see a van full of foreigners. Quick, what do you call a van full of foreigners at the bottom of the China Sea….
This weekend was very busy, as you might have noticed from all of the photos uploaded. Just to be clear, if you click on the Scott’s Photos from China link, it will show all of the photo albums that are available to be viewed. Click on any of the albums to open it up and look at all of the photos from that area. Although I have the albums listed, those names may change. I’ve got two different names for the place where we were, at least the mountain name. It’s very difficult to tell in many cases where exactly you are since everything is in Chinese and when I go back later to search online to ensure I have things correct, some of information is misleading (at least the information in English, perhaps the all Chinese websites are fine). We were at Stone Lake but it’s a matter of interpreting the map as to which mountain we were really on. It probably isn’t all that important but I like to know where I have been. I’ll go through one day and do some insights into the photos to indicate what was happening or what you may miss when looking at the photo that was more obvious while I was there. For example, the photo shown below was taken at New Times Square in Suzhou. It's a large shopping complex on the North East side of JinJi Lake in Suzhou Industrial Park. It has a mall that is 4 stories at the moment (5 stories are completed but there are no stores are on that floor at this time). The bottom floor contains a very large grocery store, the first floor is housewares, second floor, clothes, etc. It's huge, but not like Western malls. There are no "storefronts" as we are used to them. In the US, walk in to a store and it's JCPenney merchandise throughout, same with Sears, etc. Here, it's a storefront but once you get past a section, there could be a totally different section with other clothes, shoes from someone else. For example, there was a shoe area that sold Aasics, Nike, Puma, Adidas, each was it's own little shop with it's own salesperson. It wasn't like there was a gap between them, on the shelves to the right, Adidas, 20 paces up was Nike, on the left was Puma and so on. Anyhow, as we walked through the different levels, we stumbled on an LL Bean store, imagine that a little Freeport, Maine right here in Suzhou.
Small children seem to really enjoy the foreigner’s. Probably one of every 20 kids will run up and say “Hello”, wave and laugh. If you say Hello back to them, they just laugh like it’s the funniest thing in the world as they scoot away. One young child we walked by on the weekend said “Hello” and later when he rode by us on his bicycle he said “This is my bicycle. Goodbye.” and waved as he passed us (he was on the back of the bicycle and his dad was doing the pedaling). We will get a second looks from about 1/3 of the people riding by on scooters or bicycles (they will turn their head and look at us as they go by, not just a glance but a 2-3 second stare which around here could be the difference between getting home on the bike or ending up under a truck). It’s not a look to the side but watching the entire time they pass by, it’s almost an indicator of where they are from in China. People used to seeing the “white devils” don’t give us much thought but those from less modernized areas of the country will always watch you with curiosity. It’s not uncomfortable, nothing threatening; they just don’t consider the same things rude that we do and so they stare. We’ll see the same thing on the bus ride, we’ll pass by the buses and some will almost seem shocked to see a van full of foreigners. Quick, what do you call a van full of foreigners at the bottom of the China Sea….
This weekend was very busy, as you might have noticed from all of the photos uploaded. Just to be clear, if you click on the Scott’s Photos from China link, it will show all of the photo albums that are available to be viewed. Click on any of the albums to open it up and look at all of the photos from that area. Although I have the albums listed, those names may change. I’ve got two different names for the place where we were, at least the mountain name. It’s very difficult to tell in many cases where exactly you are since everything is in Chinese and when I go back later to search online to ensure I have things correct, some of information is misleading (at least the information in English, perhaps the all Chinese websites are fine). We were at Stone Lake but it’s a matter of interpreting the map as to which mountain we were really on. It probably isn’t all that important but I like to know where I have been. I’ll go through one day and do some insights into the photos to indicate what was happening or what you may miss when looking at the photo that was more obvious while I was there. For example, the photo shown below was taken at New Times Square in Suzhou. It's a large shopping complex on the North East side of JinJi Lake in Suzhou Industrial Park. It has a mall that is 4 stories at the moment (5 stories are completed but there are no stores are on that floor at this time). The bottom floor contains a very large grocery store, the first floor is housewares, second floor, clothes, etc. It's huge, but not like Western malls. There are no "storefronts" as we are used to them. In the US, walk in to a store and it's JCPenney merchandise throughout, same with Sears, etc. Here, it's a storefront but once you get past a section, there could be a totally different section with other clothes, shoes from someone else. For example, there was a shoe area that sold Aasics, Nike, Puma, Adidas, each was it's own little shop with it's own salesperson. It wasn't like there was a gap between them, on the shelves to the right, Adidas, 20 paces up was Nike, on the left was Puma and so on. Anyhow, as we walked through the different levels, we stumbled on an LL Bean store, imagine that a little Freeport, Maine right here in Suzhou.
Nothing makes you feel like you're back home like a quick stroll through LL Bean and I mean quick, this photo covers pretty much the entire expanse of the LL Bean section in this part of the mall. So it's not everything from Bean, not the entire Freeport experience but it'll do.
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