Suzhou Auto Show
February/March, 2003
I spent part of February and
March on the back side of the globe -- thus giving my immune system a real
workout. It wasn't until I came home from China that I discovered that various
people were folding up with SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-- or
Sayonara After Rapid Sickness). I did experience flu-like symptoms (for
about an hour and a half ) when I was in Suzhou -- but that may have had more to
do with the Chinese brandy that I drank at a business celebration than with any
airborne malady. My collegues and I dined in a small restaurant in a small
village out by lake Tai Hu, a restaurant that happened to run out of wine for
ceremonial toasting. The waiter substituted the brandy (58% alcohol) and did not
tell me- so I got ceremonially toasted. (I didn't understand the Mandarin words
for, 'We are all out of white wine, would you like to drink some
industrial-grade metal degreaser instead?) After three ounces of the stuff my
tongue went numb and my teeth felt soft. Any viral or bacterial infection
residing inside my body would have been killed instantly.
On the hour long trip back
to my hotel, the booze was definitely a factor to be reckoned with. The back
road we were on had a sign on it that read, (loosely translated)
"Large gaping holes in the road ahead that are so deep that if you are
unfortunate enough to drive into one of them- your bodies will not be discovered
by archeologists until long after China has a new name." It seemed as
though we were driving over evenly spaced railroad ties and around whirlpools in
the dark. I asked our driver, "Are you sure you're not lost? It's too
dark out here to tell." That broke everybody up. One final word about
inadvertently intoxicating yourself with Chinese brandy\paint
remover\accelerant- the last place that you would like to go when you are dizzy
and disoriented is to travel in a brightly lit, mirrored on all sides elevator-
with a bunch of people talking in rapid-fire Mandarin. 'Nuff said.
As a hotel 'regular' (three week stays a few times a year) I
get to experience some of the hotel services that 'overnighters' generally miss,
such as the magic laundry and mystery room service. (The room service menu still
has the words 'good luck' printed its cover. I don't know what that is about.)
I got some clothes back from the hotel laundry with amazing results. My formerly
tan sweatshirt is now tinted greenish brown, is curled at its edges, and is half
a size smaller. I think they cooked it. The fresh cleaned towels in my bathroom
also have the slight aroma of bacon grease. If my dinner tastes a little
soapy-- that would be a pretty good indication that the hotel rotates their
staff a little too quickly.
Most of the hotel staff know me by name -- or at least by
sight as the strange American who eats dinner in his room and walks across the
street to the supermarket to buy junk food and dress shirts. I had to buy
clothes almost daily-- due to the incredible miniaturization work of the hotel
laundry. But the hotel staff is exceedingly polite, and
seemingly unfazed by my appearance. The lobby personnel will greet me with a
smile and a pleasant, "Good evenering, Mr. Marlonheny", regardless of
whatever I am carrying or dragging in; be it three new shirts, four liters of
soda pop, or two kites-- fully assembled. It might be interesting to try
bringing in something a little more unorthodox for a luxury hotel-- like an
automobile tire or a 50 kg bag of concrete mix. Then again they might send over
a bellhop to assist me in dragging my bag of cement to the elevator. People in
China are very accommodating.
Some of the stores do draw a line as far as accommodations go. I saw a
sign in one of the local supermarkets prohibiting the patrons from storing their
poultry or pets in the free storage lockers located just inside the store. It
might not be a hard and fast rule, because I believe that I might have heard
some non-technologically based scratching type noises emanating from the
vicinity of the locker area.
I was taking a walk through downtown Suzhou and
wandered into the computer software market. (Home of the 'Jolly Rogers' or
A.S.P.'s --Asian Software Pirates) Normally, I am a stickler for purchasing only
licensed software. I am a network administrator, and pirated software is a BIG
NO for me. The computer software and movie industries lose billions of
dollars in revenue due to pirated CDROMs and DVDs. I was curious as to what was
selling in the market, so I took a look at some DVDs. Well, in a moment of
weakness I bought a pirated DVD for $1-- not for the DVD disc -- which I threw
away, but for the official-looking sleeve that the disc came in. The movie was
"Catch Me If You Can" starring Tom Hanks and Leonardo Di Caprio - and
according to the sleeve the movie was directed by Brian De Palma and written by
Oliver Stone. This should come as quite a shock to Barry Kemp and Steven
Spielberg who produced and directed it, at least they did when I saw it in a
theater back in the US.. (One of the producers of this film is a relative of my
wife's family- which is why the movie caught my eye.) The sleeve went on
to say that the New York Post declared this movie as "one of the best
all-star gangland dramas since the Outsiders." The English translation of
the sleeve also gave an interesting synopsis of the movie. It was
described as a documentary about a female student at the University of
California who is also a porn actress who set a world's record for having sex
with the most number of men in a ten hour span (251 men- if the sleeve is
accurate.) Catch Me if You Can has nothing to do whatsoever with ganglands or
-excuse me- g*ngbangs, unless I missed those parts when I was buying popcorn or
something.
Reason #455 for not buying pirated software- you don't know what you are buying.
Another disc I purchased (legally by the way- I bought it from an
internationally recognized retail store) was a compact disc set of
"relaxation music" which consisted of classical music recordings with
'sounds of nature' mixed into the background. It is a novel idea, and sounds
like a winner-- IF the music and sounds are mixed together properly. In my case
the audio engineer that put this thing together could have partly deaf because
the sounds of nature are played too loudly in comparison to the classical music.
The 'babbling brook' portion sounds more like Bach serenading the Johnstown
flood. Who wants to be lost in the woods at night with Chopin? (At least
he's playing a 'nocturne'.) If it were me, I'd probably burn the piano to keep
warm, and possibly signal a searching party.
I missed the Chicago Auto Show this year, and it really depressed me.
Here I was in China, on the other side of the earth, totally unable to do my
nearly yearly pilgrimage to the Midwestern Mecca of mechanized motivation
meeting at McCormick Place. I love to look at cars, especially if someone else
is responsible for maintaining them. So there I was, walking down the street in
Suzhou, watching the traffic in front of my hotel, most of which was decidedly
non-motorized. (You just would not believe the way people get around on their
bicycles. I saw guys carrying twelve foot planks lashed to their bikes, weaving
in and out of the two wheel crowds. The looked like they were jousting! I
saw one guy pedaling furiously and leaning WAY over the side of his bike, trying
to counter-balance the apartment sized refrigerator that was tied to the other
side. Nobody gave the guy a second look as he pumped and strained to ride up an
incline with this thing.
On this particular day, I took a walk to the local department store to
replace some shrunken trousers (see above) and after I ended up buying a suit
($40 including alterations), I decided to walk back to the hotel. The
local auto dealers had a big display in a parking lot, and since I missed the
Chicago Auto Show, I figured why not take a look at some of the local product.
So I wandered around the "Suzhou Auto Show", looking at Hyundais,
'Cherys', 'Brilliance Autos', Chinese Fords, VWs and 'Bluebirds' (the Chinese
version of the Lexus). I walked around and through the crowd looking at
the cars, when I noticed a Chinese TV camera crew looking at.... me. It
was a little disconcerting -- trying to look over the locally made vehicles with
the Asian Paparazzi shadowing me. Every time I turned around there was Suzhou
Channel 5 focusing in from about ten feet away with a guy in a suit was holding
a microphone and trying to look nonchalant. I played hide and seek for a while
by the Lexus- Bluebirds, and even took out my camera and got some pictures of
them filming me. The car salesmen must have thought I was some kind of American
celebrity, because they would run up and hand me some sales literature (all in
Chinese) and try to get me to sit in their cars. I would smile, look at whatever
car the particular salesman was showing, then nod my head with approval. The
sales rep would smile back. Again and again. I lost count of the cars after a
while. Most of them looked pretty good, and pretty well built-- but there
were a couple really cheap ones-- which for all I know may have wooden
engines and bodies made of papier mache'. But still I would smile, letting
the people know that I appreciated their products. (I am a connoisseur of cheap
transportation. The award for the crummiest car I have ever traveled any
distance in was a Vauxhall that I rode in during a trip to England. I thought
that the whole interior of the car -including the seats and dashboard-- was
constructed entirely from masonite particle board.)
After I looked at the Shanghai-made Buicks (--the Chinese
Regal is a $40,000USD car that looks like a Buick on the outside- but more like
a Jaguar on the inside), I started to leave. My public relations tank was
running dry, and I was looking forward to going back to my hotel and refueling
with a little Tsing Tao or some reasonably cheap alternative. As I
walked out of the show, the Buick rep chased me down. She was all out of breath
and told me that the TV people were all excited and they wanted to interview me
for the local Suzhou TV station. So I went back, and for five minutes I stood
next to a new Shanghai Buick and told all of Suzhou that the auto show was
interesting, and that the new Chinese cars were similar in most ways to American
cars. I don't know if the station actually aired the silly video of me walking
around the lot and stammering like an idiot to a news reporter who couldn't
speak much English anyway.
My biggest fear is that my face will now go up on Shanghai GM
billboards all over China and I will be selling Buicks for the next two or three
years. Arnold Schwartzenager's picture is all over the city- on posters
advertising all manner of products. He sells lots of stuff-- he just
doesn't know it.
I was also able to do one of my favorite activities on
this trip-- I stepped out of my hotel on a beautiful Sunday to be greeted
by a dazzling sun in the sky, puffy clouds and just the right kind of wind-- a
light breeze from one general direction. I went walking down the street in
search of an open space while scanning the horizon for low flying objects. I got
to the park to see the air filled with dozens of kites. There were so many
colorful kites flying overhead that the park could have used an air traffic
controller just to keep them apart. I watched paper and cloth kites in shapes
and sizes I had never before seen dancing on the breeze- and children as young
as 4 or 5 years old launching and piloting them with expertise. Box kites, bird
kites, dragons and diamonds and saucers too. I bought a sailcloth bird kite with
string and winder for about $2. It had five different colors and a tail that
spun like a snake in the breeze. The wind was perfect. I just tossed the thing
into the air and let out the string. In less than a minute the kite was about a
hundred feet in the air. The wind got a little tricky due to a nearby tall
hill, but I had that thing aloft without an incident for nearly half an hour--
until the children in the park began to look like my two sons James and Peter--
who were back in the US. Then the air got a little chilly and I had to bring the
kite down. As I was leaving, I saw a pair of little girls who got their
kite stuck in a tree. They were pulling and tugging on the string-- and several
bystanders came over to help. As I came over, the string broke and the girls
looked very sad. Their toy was up in a tree. I looked at the kite in my
hand, now folded up. Its perfect flying shape and bright colors didn't seem to
suit me anymore. Well-- maybe I'll find another one like it on my next
trip.
Gotta go.. There is a kite wind somewhere...
Neil
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