Month: September 2019

Philbert’s Phables Shanghai Edition – II – A Brief Overview of Major Chinese Apps

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This next post is something of a testament to how difficult it is to get basic services set up as a foreigner in China. First off, I got my health report back with no problems, so now I am eligible for a work permit. This is what the report looks like:

Next, I had to get a bank account and a China mobile phone number. For a bank account I needed my basic identification (passport, visa) and a signed, “chopped” copy of my employment contract with my company. Chopped, meaning it has the official seal of the company plastered in red ink or some such.

This was not too difficult – However, a bank account is only of limited use in China since most payments are conducted using WeChat Pay or Ali Pay. These are third-party payment methods offered by WeChat (China’s largest social messaging and networking app offered by TenCent – more on this later) and Alibaba, respectively. Basically the Chinese do everything through their phones now, even in some instances unlocking and locking doors.

Cash is almost non-existent and credit cards are not prevalent as they are difficult to obtain. I’ve mainly only seen foreigners using cash (myself included). You can transfer money to other people using the app (though again, there are limitations for foreigners) or pay vendors like shops and restaurants.

With Alipay, you scan the vendor or a friend’s QR code and pay or transfer money them through the app. WeChat pay is similar. There is a daily limit for transfers (image from https://www.saporedicina.com/english/alipay-alibaba-payment-platform, a helpful article on Alipay)

But in order to get those services, I needed real-name authentication of a Chinese phone number – I needed to be personally identified with a Chinese cell phone number at the China Mobile office, with my picture taken, along with my passport information, for the real-name authentication to take effect.

I got a real-name-authenticated, local Chinese number, which I was able to link up with the bank (debit) card I received in WeChat and Alipay, so that I could pay directly out of the bank account or transfer money into the two apps and vice versa. With that, here is a brief overview of the main components of China’s app (they call them “A-P-P”’s ecosystem.

This non-exhaustive list of essential apps in China includes WeChat （微信）, DiDi （滴滴）, Baidu Maps and Baidu （百度）, Alipay （支付宝）, TaoBao （淘宝）, JingDong (JD.com)（京东）, ELeMe（饿了吗），Meituan （美团），Dazhongdianping （大众点评），CTRIP， Tielu 12306 （铁路12306）and DingDong Maicai （叮咚买菜). They are displayed in order below:

WeChat: It would take an entire blog post or more to describe the centrality and functionality of WeChat to Chinese life, but besides being the most popular social messaging app in China (1 billion users worldwide as of early 2019), its payment feature allows you to pay vendors (restaurants, stores, even fruit sellers and locksmiths) and receive money yourself from friends and others.

There’s a lot of features in WeChat, but once you add money to your WeChat balance with a Chinese bank account (and Chinese cell phone number,) you can transfer money by scanning people’s QR codes and adding them as friends, or pay others using the Money button, where the vendor scans your QC code that pops up (picture from helpful https://lerner.co.il/2018/12/28/the-foreigners-guide-to-wechat-payments-in-china/)

DiDi Chuxing: China’s highly dominant ride-sharing service, equivalent to Uber or Lyft. You can order more than one type of car (nicer vehicles, or regular taxis) at a time when queue times are long, which happens a lot in a busy city (there isn’t so much of a surge charge as there is in the US). Of course, you pay with WeChat or Alipay. Lots of safety tips and driver rating systems.

Baidu Maps and Baidu: Very similar to Google Maps and Google, but in China

Alipay : There are a ton of features and products on this app too, but it’s mainly used to pay with – Dominant in Hangzhou, where Alibaba hails from

TaoBao, JingDong (JD.com) : Similar to Amazon in China, you can buy pretty much anything on these sites, although the stuff on TaoBao tends to be cheaper in quality and price. I’ve ordered 24-packs of Perrier, silverware, and clotheshangers so far.

As you can see, lots of food can be ordered in bulk

ELeMe（饿了吗）[Blue theme]，Meituan （美团）[Yellow theme]: Food delivery apps, think GrubHub or DoorDash but not as expensive – it’s only slightly more expensive than dining in a restaurant. Super popular.

Dazhongdianping （大众点评）: This is like the Yelp of China, lots of ratings of restaurants, shops, stores, bars, everything.

Stores in the hot pot category, you can filter by distance, rating etc.

CTRIP : Dominant Chinese version of Orbitz, Kayak, etc., you can book tickets for plane, rail, tour packages, hotel and hostel trips, and so on.

Tielu 12306 （铁路12306） : One of the main apps for rail ticket booking in China

DingDong Maicai （叮咚买菜) : They will purchase groceries for you and deliver them to your door.

To show some of the complexity around these apps, many of these apps link to one another within the app itself. For example, WeChat connects to Didi, Jingdong (JD), Meituan and Dazhongdianping, as shown below:

I could keep going with these apps – and probably will – but this is just a start. Remember, basically all of these apps require a smartphone to operate.

Into the Myst III – Deeper Worlds

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This My Machine Life blog arc explores how computer games and gaming has shaped my creative vision and perception of the world in general, from an early time in my life until now.

Myst (1993)

Myst is one of the most famous computer games of the 1990s, and of all time. It was the best-selling computer game ever until The Sims took that title away in 2003. Through the powers of a magical book, the player is transported to an island with a lot of interesting architecture and other contraptions but no people, and has to solve puzzles to find out more about the world and find a way out. The puzzles are involved and require a lot of experimentation and poking around to solve, such as raising a sunken ship or mapping certain patterns of constellations in a planetarium/observatory. Upon completion of the puzzles on the island, the player is transported to subsequent worlds (with more puzzles) and uncovers the story of a rivalry between siblings that takes place via magical book writing.

The game is very immersive with its imagery and sound effects, and definitely pushed the boundaries of what a puzzle game could be at the time. When you immerse yourself in these virtual worlds, you/your brain can truly believe that you are in a different dimension. Your perception of time is altered as your brain creates a representation of a virtual world within your own mind. It’s also a testament to the idea that a book can truly transport you to another world.

Years later and without warning I had a vision of the Myst island as a microcosm for human civilization: The observatory represented the scientific endeavor, the library represented all accumulated human knowledge, the clocktower simply the passage of time for civilization, the gears industry and the redwood forest/furnace represented natural resources, and so on. Of note was the ship that allowed for exploration of the “sea,” or the boundaries of existence as known to humanity.

But most importantly to me at the time was the rocket/spaceship at the edge of the island that eventually transported players/travelers to other worlds, not by flying, but by some of futuristic transportation. Teleportation, transmutation, whatever it was called, either the player’s atoms are rearranged and transported to another world, or they are simply injected into another virtual world-within-a-world, which is exactly what Myst is all about in the first place.

To me, the spaceship represents what the human mind can imagine about other worlds, both external and internal, that have yet to become reality.

Out of this World/Another World (1991)

Speaking of other worlds, I remember watching the intro of this game and playing the first few minutes with my father multiple times, since we couldn’t get past the early part of the game where the player is eaten by an alien lion after escaping some alien snakes. This lion bit is actually considered one of the most frustrating sequences in computer game history, so it’s not that embarrassing, but the intro was truly something special. 

A sports car-driving scientist (?) goes into a secure facility to run some tests on what appears to be a particle accelerator. A storm starts to form and lightning hits the machine just at the right time to transport the scientist into another dimension and/or another planet. Eventually the scientist survives to find an entire alien civilization and escapes home, but I never got that far.

Again, these games were made using pretty primitive graphics, but were designed in a way that immersed the player in a new world. Just the opening sequence itself is worthy of a science-fiction film of its own, let alone the entire story and game.

Darkseed (1992)

Ah, this is where my dad may have not demonstrated the best judgment in playing this game with me.

Charming

The player is a successful ad exec and writer who recently purchased an old mansion. The first night he sleeps there, he has a dream that aliens have injected something into his brain and wakes up with a massive headache. He later explores the mansion to find that A) there is a parallel “Dark World” that can enter the human world through the mansion, B) it’s populated by malicious aliens, and C) if he doesn’t destroy the “Darkseed” in his brain (which is real), it will hatch and destroy all humanity – and kill him, obviously.

Really lovely

Ok, we never played that much of this game, either, since it’s also considered one of the most difficult and frightening ones of its era. And, after seeing a baby delivered by the mailman turn into a grotesque alien, I think I had enough of it too. But the cool part about this game is that it was designed by H. R. Giger, who is the same Swiss painter who designed the aliens and sets in the movie Alien. Can you see the resemblance of the artwork? So, I was exposed to some pretty high-level sci-fi stuff even back then.

So there you have it, the games I played when I was in preschool and kindergarten have left a lasting impression on me and made me believe in the power of entering deeper (virtual) worlds. Next time on My Machine Life: Into the Myst, it’s going to be all about combat flight and war simulators from the 1990’s, as the Early Period continues!

Into the Myst II – Beginnings

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Among the earliest computer games I remember playing are games for which I was able to find the names of, and games whose names I simply have no idea about. I may have started with point-and-click games geared towards children, but I distinctly remember playing more adult-oriented games with my father as well. At any rate, here are some to start:

Arthur’s Birthday Party (1994), Little Critter: Grandma and Me (1992), Harry and the Haunted House (1994)

Arthur’s Birthday Party, Little Critter: Just Grandma and Me, Harry and the Haunted House were all from the Living Books series. These point-and-click games involved a page-by-page story where you could click on different parts of the page to play small animations before continuing. For example, the brass (?) American bald eagle on the top of a flagstaff would spread its wings and do a little dance to the beginning of the American anthem when you clicked on it, an apple would fall from the tree and/or produce a worm when you clicked on it, a horn would sound, and so on. They were pretty creative with the animations and you would often find something new to click on on a replay.

Just Grandma and Me was a particularly poignant game for me, since I saw even at an early age the storyline from sun-up to sundown as a parable for life and death. Basically, Little Critter and his grandma go to the beach. But where was the rest of the family: Grandpa, parents, siblings? I know that would undermine the storyline of the whole game, but it was concerning. Everyone looked way too happy.

All I remember from Harry and the Haunted House was that the kids hit a baseball into this creaky old house and somehow think that trespassing there to find the ball is a good idea. They eventually find the owner to be a pleasant person, but along the way there was one page with a painting of an old sailor, who starts singing the chorus to the song “Drunken Sailor” when you clicked on it. That made an impression on me.

That’s the sailor

Paintbox Pals: Peter Pan (1993) and Around the World in 80 days (1994).

Next up is Paintbox Pals: Peter Pan and Around the World in 80 Days. You would also follow the storylines of those classic tales that changed depending on your choices in the game, and in these games you have to solve puzzles and challenges using one of your anthropomorphic paintbox pals, a pencil, a paintbrush, an eraser, and something else. For example, Peter Pan might have to cross a river or stream, so you would use the pencil to link together a bridge, or there might be fire in the woods that you would put out with the eraser. The eraser was easiest since you would just click on something and it goes away; you didn’t have to actually draw anything. There were usually more than a couple solutions to each puzzle and outcomes to the story by picking a different Paintbox Pal each time.

The most memorable parts of Around the World in 80 Days were the Egyptian mummy and Hollywood Alien puzzles, which were both kind of frightening to me. Apparently there was also a Jungle Book version of Paintbox Pals which I never played.

Zoo Keeper (1994)

Beyond an encyclopedia of animals with collectible “fun facts” pages that I really enjoyed reading growing up, and visiting zoos in general, Zoo Keeper was probably the other game that stimulated my interest in wildlife and nature. In the game, some animals have had their habitats ruined and you have to fix that and put the culprits behind bars (ironically). Lots of animal facts and animations.

Various others

There were a number of games that I simply don’t remember the names for and only remember bits and pieces of. There was a game where you had to solve a puzzle (might have been early math) to gradually open doors featuring cubist paintings, one of which was Picasso’s Three Musicians. There was a game where you could place “stickers” of medieval or pirate characters onto backgrounds to create your own scenes. There was a game where you could grow fantastical vegetables and flowers in gardens and sell them in a market; I particularly remember trimming hedgerows into whimsical shapes and growing sunflowers with babies’ faces in them. And there was a game that I remember you could also create your own scenes with floating shapes set to music, of which one of their samples was of floating, rotating dancers from Matisse’s Dance set to exotic vocalizations.

Equally honorable mentions include Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and Swampgas, a game where you flew around the US to different states and cities in alien spacecraft. Both expanded my geographical knowledge of the US and the world.

Oh, and Ski Free, a classic.

These early games were geared towards children, but in the next MML post, I will describe my early exposure to games that were decidedly not made for children, and how that impacted me. At any rate, any game that allowed for autonomy of choice in storylines and creating scenes and arranging shapes or stickers on a palette to create new worlds was highly instrumental to my development.

Philbert’s Phables Shanghai Edition – I

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I flew to Shanghai on September 1, 2019 as part of my relocation to my company’s China office for at least two years. It’s only been about five days since I arrived, but of course there are already Phables to be told. It’s China! 

Actually, this entire process to transfer to China took five months, and it’s still ongoing. Two months for corporate and leadership to approve the transfer, two months to gather and prepare the necessary documents, and about one month of just waiting around. Here are my bags packed and ready to go after the apartment got cleared out. 

There were more bags than this

To be honest not many Americans understand or know much about China. But I believed that this was the right decision for my career and my future. 

The flight itself went well. I didn’t sleep much but watched a lot of movies, some of questionable quality. American Airlines claims not to edit their movies for “objectionable” content, but they did for the latest Hellboy movie, which is obscenely violent. Aquaman needed no editing, being one of those mass market PG-13 comic book romps, but what struck me about both movies is this idea of a hero of mixed “breed” trying to unite both worlds – Demon and Human in Hellboy’s case and the undersea people and surface people in Aquaman’s case. Both characters were born as hybrids of humans and whatever other species. I kind of took to this idea since I’m mixed with both Chinese/Taiwanese and American heritage, and sometimes see my purpose as bringing the two (well, three) worlds together, all the more important during these times of difficult relations for all sides. 

I also identified a lot with the Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga movie A Star is Born, but mainly the song “Shallow.” I knew I really wanted to watch the movie since I’m a fan of both of them but I never got around to doing it until this flight – and I only watched the first parts where people were still enjoying themselves. The timing kind of worked out well – here are the lyrics to Shallow that really resonated with me on where I was in life, going to a new city in a foreign land (well, not that foreign, as I’ve lived here before):

I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in

I’ll never meet the ground

Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us

We’re far from the shallow now

I’m not exactly escaping my problems in the US, but things weren’t going that well for me, either. I went straight to the deep end on this one in a sort of career Hail Mary. Over the past five days I still find it kind of crazy that I’m actually here. More work remains. Just listen to the story of how I had to get a state-sponsored health checkup in a neighboring city.

My office building in downtown Shanghai

In order to apply for a work permit in China, I had to get a health checkup at a government-sponsored hospital. Since there is apparently only one such hospital per county, city region, or whatever, and the one in Shanghai was booked out for “group” checkups until some undetermined date, Suzhou was the only option within reach. Suzhou is about 30 minutes from Shanghai by high-speed rail, which is pretty reasonable. So I went. 

It was pretty easy to buy a train ticket at Shanghai station and get through security (I had to show my passport and train ticket a bunch of places) and it was easy getting to the Suzhou official hospital as well. I got a pass in my application as I didn’t have one of the required documents but they were able to use an alternative method of authentication, and I also later got a pass in one of my medical exams (I wasn’t supposed to drink water but did in the morning since I was too thirsty, but they let it slide “this time”). Someone on the staff there also re-sized my application photos for me.

A note on photos and picture-taking, there are definitely sensitive parts of China I would be uncomfortable taking pictures of, for law enforcement reasons or just out of courtesy, so you’ll have to imagine those parts from my descriptions.

There were seven examinations in a number of different rooms or stations, each staffed by Chinese nurses, technicians, or maybe doctors. I had to get an ultrasound of some of my internal organs, a chest x-ray, blood drawn, a urine test, an eyesight and color blindness test, an EKG test and my height, weight and blood pressure measured. Everyone was very nice about it but it did feel like going through the official motions. There were specific diseases they were screening for (like venereal diseases and diseases of the liver), but I’m not sure what the big picture on this is, and the rules have definitely gotten a lot more stringent in recent years.

A number of other applicants were there as well, we all passed through the stations together. While standing in line I met Austin, an American linguistics student from Syracuse University studying in Suzhou. He said his dad would probably tell him not to talk to me owing to the rivalry with Georgetown. Other students and entrepreneurs from other countries were there too. 

I didn’t see much of Suzhou, I wanted to go visit 寒山寺, Hanshan (Cold Mountain) Temple, as it is featured in a poem by Tang dynasty poet Zhang Ji which is (or was) one of the lessons in Taiwan’s middle school textbooks that I remember. According to Wikipedia the poem is taught in Chinese and Japanese (?) curricula too. The poem goes like this (slightly altered English translation from https://eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/zhang-ji-maple-bridge/):

The moon descends, crows caw, frost fills the sky;

riverside maples and fishermen’s lights face me in my worried sleep.

Outside Gusu city lies Cold Mountain Temple;

at midnight, the sound of bells reaches the ferries.

But I picked a random place in the city to eat noodles (I love noodles) and it was pretty far from the temple. Next time – At least I got a cappuccino in Gusu city. Zhang Ji would be proud.

Suzhou

One other note is how helpful the younger people have been on my trip. I got help from a man on the high speed rail about finding out which was my ticket and which was the receipt, and while at a CoCo beverage stand in Suzhou the young woman working there helped me with directions and even offered to have someone drive me to the nearest metro station on an electric scooter, which would have been a Phable all by itself. I walked.

So it’s been a somewhat exciting five days. Can’t wait to see what the coming days bring.

Until next time…