I’m legal! (I think)

After three weeks, one crazy physical exam, lots of paperwork, a trip to the Public Security Bureau, and one of those weeks without my passport, I am now the proud holder of:

- one Residence Permit for Foreigner in the People’s Republic of China; and

- one People’s Republic of China Alien Employment Permit.

I don’t think there are any other permits I need now, but I’m checking on that just to be sure. 

Since these are personal documents, I won’t include pictures of the actual permits, but the AEP is actually like a passport, so here is a picture of the cover:

Pretty, isn't it?

And just so you don’t feel as though you’ve been cheated reading such a short post, I have an update on the apartment search. I did more thinking about the three places I saw, and reevaluated my assessments in the spreadsheet, particularly with regard to Apartment 1. 

Apartment 1 received the lowest scores for its bathrooms (neither had an enclosed shower) and storage/closet space (just the small walk-in closet; no dressers). In talking with the representative from Silk Road Ventures, I found that temporary shower enclosures can be added to the bathrooms in Apartment 1 and the landlord could furnish a dresser and/or armoire for the bedrooms as part of the lease contract. Those plusses together with the fantastic sun exposure and spacious balconies of Apartment 1 put it at the top of my list.

So on Monday morning, I contacted SRV to let them know I am interested in that apartment. Today, I found out that someone else had put in a bid for Apartment 1 last week and signed the contract with the landlord Monday evening. Oh well. That’s life.

SRV has already found four more apartments for me to check out, so that’s what I’ll be doing this Thursday afternoon.

I think this post needs more pictures. How about a look at my culinary accomplishment from Sunday night? I’m getting a little bit more adventurous . . .

Wood ear! (a type of edible fungus, a.k.a.,Auricularia auricula-judae) Adds a neat texture
to any dish.

Broccoli, Chinese cabbage, wood ear, enoki
mushrooms, and noodles sauteed in soy sauce.

Today, I had lunch with three friends in one of the cafeterias located on the second floor of our office building. This cafeteria's specialty is noodles. I was so entranced by the chef who was making the noodles right there in front of us that I unfortunately didn't get any pictures. Just to give you and idea of how amazing this was: the chef would hold one end of a long strand of dough about the circumference of a man's wrist in each hand, and shake it to lengthen it out. Then he'd raise the two ends up so that they would twist around one another (it looked a little like raw challah bread). He did this about five or six times with the same piece of dough. Then he put the dough on a table and cut noodle-length chunks off of it. He then took each chunk and shook-twisted it even more, resulting in long, thin noodles (he had his back to us for this part, so I couldn't see exactly what he was doing). He threw them into a pot of boiling water and then served the people waiting in line.

I'll have to go back another day--not just to get pictures, but to get more of those noodles! 

To market, to market

My grocery run on Tuesday evening was just for starters. Saturday’s run was the real deal—I took pictures, I asked where things were, I stocked up on food. One of the things that I couldn’t find on Tuesday was soy milk, so one of my goals for Saturday’s trip was to find it. Using the wonders of technology, I typed “soy milk” into a translation app I have on my iPhone and learned that “soy milk” in Chinese is “豆浆”(dòu jiāng). Prepared with this information and how to ask where something is, I walked to Lotus.

Lotus is a pretty big store—one-third of the store is food, and two-thirds are clothes, shoes, electronics, books, appliances, sports equipment, etc. Like a Super WalMart.

That's Lotus next to a KFC. There are a surprising number of
KFCs here.

The entrance to the grocery side of Lotus. 

The bakery at the entrance.

One of the other things I had wanted on Tuesday was yogurt, of which there was plenty, but when I looked at the dates on the containers, all of them had already passed. The last thing I wanted to do was buy outdated yogurt and get food poisoning, so I held off on that and asked some of my colleagues about it. In China, the date on most food product labels is the “packed on” date, not the “use by” date like it typically is in the U.S. The skim milk that I bought on Tuesday actually has both the “packed on” and “use by” dates, but for most everything else, it’s just the “packed on” date. Very good to know. So I did get yogurt on Saturday.

On the way to the yogurt section. They really do have everything
at Lotus. Notice the "Free Dissection" sign in the background.

Gives new meaning to "fresh" food.

Back to the quest for soy milk. After I had searched again in the dairy section and the milk aisle (most milk in China undergoes UHT—ultra-high temperature processing—which gives it a typical shelf life of six to nine months unopened, and it doesn’t require refrigeration until after opening) with no luck, I bucked up the courage to ask one of the Lotus associates, in my broken Chinese, where I could find soy milk. She understood my question, but responded that she didn’t know, so she asked another associate who told me in Chinese to go straight to the next aisle (at least I think that’s what she said). So I did, and this is what I found:

The soy milk section.

It’s DIY soymilk! Yes, it’s powdered soy that you stir with boiling water. I must have stood there comparing the various options (as best I could using the pictures and the little bit of English on some of the packages) for about 15 minutes. One of the brands had instructions in Chinese and English, so using that, I was able to figure out the instructions for the brand that I ended up buying.

I think this was the only brand that had instructions in English.

Before I get into the making of the soymilk though, here is my cartful of groceries—all this cost just RMB237.40 (about $38).

My big grocery run.

Now, the making of the soy milk!

Wongmei soy milk. Each individual powder packet
can be mixed with 180ml of boiling water.

This is two packets worth of soy powder.

Voila! Soy milk! Now into the fridge to cool down.

Since I was in the “cooking” mood and had just bought some noodles and fresh veggies, I made my first real meal in the Citadines. I had brought some dill weed with me from the U.S., and there was a bottle of “all purpose” spice in one of the kitchen cabinets, so I sautéed some broccoli, Chinese cabbage, and enoki mushrooms and added that to noodles. It was actually really good! I was pretty impressed with myself. I also had some really good “Whole Wheal Bread” with raisins and walnuts.

Chinese cabbage and enoki mushrooms.

Dinner in progress on the Miji Gala electric touch-top stove.

Jasweck was excited about the noodles, broccoli,
cabbage, and mushrooms, but trying to hide it. 

The "Whole Wheal" bread.

Really good!

Well, it's dinner time here, so I'm going to see if I channel whatever cooking talent helped me make last night's meal.

Welcome to the family!

After looking at apartments on Wednesday morning, I went to the office to meet my new work family.

The office is on the 17th floor of this building.

Yes, that's a Starbucks. This little area is right next to the
building where the office is.

Whenever a new employee starts at the JV, they have a “welcome meeting” with the newbie and everyone who is in the office that day. The “veterans” introduce themselves to the new employee and then the new employee introduces him/herself. Everyone is so friendly and happy to have me with them in the JV!  I was very impressed by their ability to transition seamlessly between Chinese and English, especially when it comes to more than just introductions and saying hello. I am anxious to start up my Chinese lessons again so I can chat with my new friends in Chinese and learn from them.  We took a group photo at the end of the day even though we were missing about 10 people due to travel. They made me sit in the front (but it’s not that hard to tell which one is me anyway).

About two-thirds of the current JV family.

Thursday was my first full day in the office, and since I was there at lunch time, I was able to go out to lunch with four of my new friends. We went to a Sichuan restaurant close to the office. This is us:

我的朋友. (My friends.)

At this restaurant, you can serve yourself rice porridge any time during the meal—it’s somewhat like free bread at Western restaurants. It’s pretty good, but it all depends on the “toppings” you put on it—peanuts, crispy noodles, onions, chives, eggs, pickled vegetables, etc. I had my first bowl of porridge with peanuts and crispy noodles.

My first rice porridge.

On Friday, I went out to lunch with three other friends at Ajisen Ramen. Yes, there is an Ajisen Ramen in Xi’an too (there are probably more throughout the city, but this is the first one I’ve seen). This one was better than the one in Shanghai though—it offered a much cooler option for vegetarians:

Noodles with more than just mushrooms this time. 

More friends!

Friday also happened to be the last day for Stan, the JV’s General Manager and the man who has helped move the JV from idea to reality. Stan is an expat from the U.S who has been in Xi’an since 2009, and now he is returning to the UTAS facility in Rockford, IL to be the GM of another division of the company. So as a last hurrah, the JV team planned a fantastic send-off evening for him—a Chinese banquet at a very nice local restaurant followed by karaoke at KTV (karaoke + TVs showing the lyrics and music videos).

We had three large tables in a semi-private room in the restaurant. Each table had various dishes on a large glass “Lazy Susan” in the center. This looked like a lot of food to begin with, but then the wait staff kept bringing more and more dishes, moving dishes and taking some away so it would all fit. You can have a little bit of everything this way just by spinning the Lazy Susan around and picking out what you’d like. It was pretty easy to tell what had meat in it and what didn’t, so I stuck to veggie/tofu/fish/noodle dishes. However, I did try a little bit of roast pigeon. Stan raved so much about how good roast pigeon is that I had to try it. It looked and tasted a little like stringy dark meat chicken. It was okay. The tofu dish and honeyed lotus root dishes were better, in my opinion.

First round of dishes. The one that looks like chicken is the roast
pigeon. The lotus root dish is at 12 o'clock; the tofu is at 9 o'clock.

More dishes added. The dish at 10/11 o'clock is fish wrapped
in bamboo leaves or seaweed (I can't remember) baked in a hard
bread crust. In order to get to the fish, someone must break the
bread with small mallet--being the newbie, I was given that honor.
The bread is surprisingly tough to break!

The inside of the "breaded" fish that I broke.

Chinese banquets are not just about food though. The other big part of Chinese banquets is the toasting. Stan started it off with a great toast to the JV team and to Ira, the new General Manager. Then toasts would happen sporadically throughout the evening. You’ll be sitting down eating something, and all of a sudden someone will stand up and start a toast, so then everyone else stands up, glasses in hand. People moved from table to table to toast each other, to toast the table, to toast the JV. You can toast with just about any drink—the most popular is báijiǔ (白酒), a clear spirit that looks like vodka and is served in what looks like a very tiny wine glass (Stan and Ira are holding the glasses in the picture below). I toasted with orange juice, tea, and Sprite. There was so much toasting it was hard to keep my glass full!

Stan (left) toasting the JV and Ira (right).

So after three hours eating and toasting, about 13 of us went to KTV for some karaoke. The great thing about KTV is that you get your own “party room” so you’re only singing with friends and not with a whole club or bar full of strangers. I made a deal with Kevin, our IT manager, that if he sang something, I would too. He was one of the first people to sing, so then he helped me page through the lists of songs on a touch screen podium (there is an option for English, and there are quite a lot of English songs). I really wanted a Tom Petty song, but there were none to be found, so I settled for Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance.” If I couldn’t have “American Girl”, “Free Fallin’”, “Learning to Fly”, or “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”, at least I could have some party music. It’s funny though, I thought I knew more of the words to “Just Dance” than I actually did.

I know people took pictures, so I’ll see if I can get copies to put on the blog to prove that I really did sing karaoke. In the meantime, here are some of the rock stars from the JV. Unfortunately, all of the pictures I took looked better on my iPhone than they do now on my computer. These are the clearest ones out of the about 30 pictures I took:

Ira (left) and Stan doing a duet.

Everyone is entranced by the singing of one of our own.

The "TV" part of KTV.

I think we were there singing and laughing until about 00:45 Saturday morning. What a night!

Welcome to Xi'an!

Between the time I left Shanghai and the time I arrived in Xi’an, the weather changed considerably. I left the sun and 70º F, and arrived to rain and 53º F in Xi’an.

Since UTC expats in China are not permitted to drive, the five expats (I’m the fifth) share three drivers with mini vans. Joe, one of the drivers, welcomed me at the airport and drove me about an hour to the Citadines Gaoxin Xi’an hotel. I arrived at about 17:00.

Leaving the airport; highway sign to Xi'an.

More picturesque scenery than Shanghai (despite the rain).

Highway map at a toll station. Like Washington, D.C., Xi'an
has a "beltway" around it.

Just like at the Westin, my room was upgraded at no additional cost—I went from a one bedroom/one bathroom apartment to a two bedroom/two bathroom apartment. I don't need all that room, but it was a nice gesture. After all, I will be staying here for about a month . . . or as long as it takes to find and move into an apartment. Here are my temporary accommodations in Xi'an:

The kitchen sink--the first thing you see when
you enter the apartment.

The rest of the kitchen, and view into the dining/living area.

The first bedroom.

The rest of the first bedroom. 

View from the first bedroom. (The windows are dirty--the pollution
isn't quite as bad as the windows make it look.)

Flat screen TV in the first bedroom. 

The first bedroom's bathroom with a tub/shower.

Better view of the dining/living room area from the kitchen.

The dining nook.

The living area.

The second bedroom. The mattresses are harder than mattresses
in the U.S., but not uncomfortably so.

The view from the second bedroom.

The second bedroom's bathroom sink.

The second bathroom's stall shower.

After taking these and other pictures of the Citadines apartment, I had to get something to eat, so I ventured out to Lotus, a Super Walmart-type store. How did I know about this place, you may ask? When I visited Xi’an briefly back in June, the General Manager of the JV and his wife showed me around a bit, and one of the stops we made was to Lotus. It is conveniently located about a five-minute walk from the JV office and about a ten-minute walk from the Citadines. I didn’t take any pictures on this trip because I was hungry and just wanted to go in, get something quick for dinner, and go back to the hotel. So here’s what I ended up with:

Apple, banana, and dragon fruit.

Bet you didn't expect the inside of dragon fruit to look like this.
The fruit has the texture of kiwi fruit, but a more muted flavor.

Tasty!

I slept in the first bedroom that night, but haven't slept there since. I was able to hear the people in the apartment next door as if they were in the same room with me. Very strange. I decided to move to the second bedroom--a good decision.

So that was Tuesday. On Wednesday morning (the 24^th), I looked at three apartments for rent with the help of Silk Road Ventures (SRV), a company that specializes in assisting expats and foreign companies in Xi’an. The first two apartments were in the same complex about a 15-20 minute walk from the office. The third apartment was in a complex about a 5-10 minute walk from the office.

The office is located on Keji Road, a diagonal road toward the
bottom center of the map. The two apartment complexes I visited
are in the large, polygonal green areas between W 2nd Ring Road (the
diagonal road that comes from the bottom right-hand corner) and Keji Road.

SRV had already taken pictures of the apartments, so I didn’t take any. They sent me the pictures, and here are some of the highlights.

All of the apartments would require some clean up and minor repairs before I would move in, but SRV will handle all of that on my behalf. The first two were nicely decorated with nice hardwood floors (and some tile in the second apartment). The first was a two-bedroom, two bathroom; the second was a three-bedroom, two bathroom (there aren't many, if any, one-bedroom apartments here). The third one was a three bedroom, two bathroom.

All three have radiant heating from the floor, 24-hour hot water access (rather than on-demand), and decent Internet access options. The first two were already furnished; the third one was completely empty, and the landlord said that I could help choose all the furniture if I selected his apartment. I think I already know which apartment I would like. See if you can guess:

Apartment 1: 3rd floor apartment

Entryway looking into the living area/dining area down the length of the apartment.

Cool walk-in-closet right when you walk in the door of the apartment.

Living room with brand new flat screen TV (under the little sheet);
the tall thing in the corner is an air conditioning unit;
there is a door where the windows are that leads onto a balcony.

Dining area with brand new fridge.

Kitchen; gas stove top with ventilation hood.

More kitchen; door leading out to another balcony.

Patio room with door leading out to another balcony.

Bathroom #1; open shower.

Small bedroom--bed, desk, and two bedside tables.

Large bedroom--bed and two bedside tables.

Bathroom #2; another open shower. 

Part of a balcony; the clothes washer is around the corner.

  

Apartment 2: 22nd floor apartment

The kitchen.

Mini balcony with clothes washer. 

Living room; decorative maroon wallpaper (I wish there was a better picture
of the wallpaper--it was textured and very European);
lots of lace; door to the balcony.

Dining area.

Big bedroom; bed, bedside table; armoire.

Armoire; also notice the silver/gold decorative wall paper (the maroon
wallpaper in the living room is in the same pattern, just different colors.

Bathroom #1 with enclosed shower. 

A balcony (can't remember what room it is off of though).

Middle-sized bedroom; bed, two bedside tables, and an armoire (not in picture). 

The OMG room; bunk beds, pink desk, and pink wardrobe. And you can't see
it in the picture, but the light fixture in the ceiling was like a little chandelier
with green, purple, and pink heart-shaped glass things dangling from it.

Bathroom #2 with enclosed shower (on the right).

Apartment 3: 13th floor apartment

Bathroom #1 with enclosed shower; the bathroom is to your immediate
right when you walk in the front door (a little weird). 

The kitchen; the whole in the counter is where the stovetop will go;
the clothes washer will be in the corner all the way to the left.

Living area with door to the balcony; not sure what the deal is
with the glass rectangles on the right-hand wall.

Bedroom #1. 

Bedroom #2.

Bathroom #2 with open shower.

Bedroom #3/office.

Balcony.

I really liked Apartments 1 and 3, and I was leaning toward Apartment 3 after seeing all three, but I decided to think on it a little longer . . . and create a spreadsheet to evaluate and compare the various aspects of the apartments. (Those of you who know me shouldn't be surprised that I made a spreadsheet for this.) I awarded points to each apartment in categories such as bathroom/shower quality, natural light, living area, kitchen, furniture, storage/closet space, location, balconies, etc. The points came out as follows: 

- Apartment 3: 26 out of 30 possible points

- Apartment 1: 21 points

- Apartment 2: 13 points

I've had a few days to think more about the apartments, and I think Apartment 3 is the one for me. Let's just hope someone else hasn't beaten me to it.

Next up: new friends and food.