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.
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.
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.
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…
