My adventures in China

Chinese are training their dogs to be artist

2012-03-19T23:28:41-07:00

Chinese are everytime suprizing me. Today I discovered that they are actually pretty good at teaching their dog to be real artist. Even though dogs was in a generation before used for its meat, they are now becoming very popular as pets.

The first video is featuring 2 dogs playing piano:

The second video is featuring a Puppy mastering the moonwalk

The third video is featuring a tap dance expert

And Finally the scratching DJ

The importance of alcohol in the Chinese culture

2012-02-26T14:52:39-08:00

Drinking is a very important part of the social Chinese culture, if you are in China and want to make friends or business you need to know what drinking involve. Receiving an to eat with a Chinese include drinking, it's a way to show interest to a person to try to create a relationship.

Chinese people are not drinking to see who is the better drinker, but it's rather used by as a disinhibitor, people are less shy, share more and everybody spend a good moment. Of course doing senseless stuff because you are drunk would not be very well considered, you need to keep control of yourself.

If you accept the invitation, you will practice the art of gan bei which literally means dry glass. In China alcohol is drunk by little shot, it's the same for any alcohol: wine, beer, beige… Everybody will say gan bei 干杯(dry glass) and you must drink the whole shot as every Chinese would do, if you are drinking with only another person you can eventually make a deal for a ban bei 半杯(half glass).

By rejecting an invitation you basically refuse to know more about the person, to create social link. Trust is the base of any Chinese relation, for professional or friendly purpose. In a case of a professional meeting, do not except to close a deal at the first meeting, you should first know you interlocutor and create trust between you. By skipping this step, the chances of closing the deal are very low.

A friend of mine, Jack, is doing business in China since 10 years, is absolutely not drinking. I asked him how he handled that, here is his very interesting answer:

Years ago as I was getting started I had a lot of conflict and confrontation with this issue because most chinese will not listen to any reason why someone won't drink. Local Shanghai people are more open minded and do not care, but northern and generally non Shanghai Chinese do care, and do not care about your excuse.

In the beginning I would simply let them get drunk and they would assume I am drinking with them even if I was drinking bottled tea in a glass. Later on I spent less and less time with them as my partner and other people we hired would do the drinking for me.

One interesting point is the culture is already changing in Shanghai, this city is hosting around 180 000 foreigners and Chinese are less strict on culture facts. However Jack can confirmed that there is no way that you can't drink during a professional dinner, it's just make no sense for them.

One good point is that Asian people are generally not processing alcohol well and are getting tipsy pretty fast, however I imagine that with some training they get better and better. So if you go to China, be ready do drink, and don't forget this very important word, gan bei!

Tianjin 2011 - Spring festival

2011-03-23T01:50:59-07:00

For my last trip in China, I have seen the Spring festival fireworks. Here is a video of them with the Tianjin TV tower in background.

One thing is sure, Chinese people are still fan of fireworks!

Chinese kitchen

2010-05-20T00:09:14-07:00

For those who already came to China, they approximatively knows how the kitchen looks like. That's not so clean but some people said that the special flavor or the Chinese food come from this.

I'm friend with workers from a Chinese restaurant just near my flat where I lived. One day, I asked them if I can enter in the kitchen to watch how they cook because I'm fan of Chinese food and I'm also very interesting about cooking.

I'm every time amazed by the time between you order your dish and you get it on your table, it's about 3 or 4 minutes. Actually, they pre-cooked everything, so they just have to make it warm and mix it.

By the way I advised you this restaurant, you will discover delicious and cheap Chinese food. If you go there, say that you know a french guy and you will get a discount.

The restaurant is on Wan De Zhuang Street, I will ask my friends to give me the number and update the post later. My roommate and I called it the "blue restaurant" because the shop sign is blue or "the canteen" because we ate there almost everyday. I don't even know the real name, something in Chinese... :)

Google's politic in China is going to change

2010-01-14T14:44:21-08:00

During the censorship is more and more present in China, Google, decide to do not still censor the results of the its search engine.

Indeed the Californian company face to many web attack these times, which came from China, as other twenty other big companies.

These attacks was mainly done to access to Gmail account owned by Chinese human rights activists.

Because of these attacks, the watching politic of beijing and the uncomfortable face to the law that Google have to respect, the decision to review the business operation have been announce by David Drummond, chief legal officer. In concrete terms, Google do no still want to accept to censor the search engine's results.

Of course, Google is aware that the search engine can be shutdown and potentially close the offices.

In my opinion I think that it's a very courageous decision and of worldwide importance. I'm wondering how the Chinese giant will react face to this. It's important to know that the Californian engine own 30% of the market against 60% for the Chinese one Baidu.com.

I imagine that the government will not change of position, China is not ready yet. However it's certainly a first step to a long and hard transition.

source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html