Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Pirates, Strawberries, Pornstars, Human Hamster Balls, Goats, and a Tandem Bike
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Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Cost of Living in Xiamen
One of the most astounding things about living in Xiamen is just how ridiculously inexpensive it is to live here. Maybe it the economist in me, but I would like to dive into this subject a little bit more.
When I was trying to make my decision about whether or not to come to Xiamen, I spent some time surfing the web trying to get an accurate picture of what my budget would need to be like in order live comfortably.
It turns out this information is harder to find then I thought, so I figured I would start keeping a weekly record of it myself and make it available on the blog so that it would be accessible to anyone else that wanted to travel or live here. It certainly would have saved me some stress had it been available to me!
I should summarize my trip getting here, then I will start with weekly updates about living.
Getting too Xiamen
Costs
1 Way Flight: $636
Arranged Pick up from the Airport: $22
4 Nights in Bed and Breakfast in HK: $260
6 Months Travelers Insurance: $390
Chinese 1 Month Double Entry Travel Visa: $300
Sight Seeing in HK and Eating: $100
Flight to Xiamen: $216
Virtual Private Network (for getting around Chinese firewall): $29.50
Total (with a few small international transaction fees and bottles of water to round it off): $2,000
Many of the costs could easily now be avoided in a variety of ways. Getting the right visa in the US for starters would eliminate the need to fly to HK all together and all the costs associated with it. (Very much depends on the purpose of your visit) For my arrangement and F visa works nicely.
The first 2 1/2 months will have to be one crude summary since I didn't keep very good records.
Moving in and Living
(based on 6.8 to 1 Exchange rate)
Monthly rent for a 1 bed room one bath apartment in Huli Area: $191.17
Included in the apartment were:
Hot Plate and Toaster Oven: $100
Christmas Presents for coming home: $250
Other stuff including dishes, transportation, food, and cleaning stuff, and going out: about $800
Total: about $1600
This is pretty vague, but the total is accurate because I know my monthly Salary is $800 (quite a good salary by Xiamen standards, English teachers here make about $730. I also read somewhere that $800 is about what a law school grad can expect to make starting salary here) and by the time I left to come home for break a had not taken any money out of my US account since my trip to HK. Of course I will be more specific from here on out since that is the point of this section of the blog.
Grand total of living and traveling for 3 months: $3600
(Note this does not include my flight home which was paid for by the company but would have cost me $600 had I not been coming back)
Any suggestions on a format would be great. I hope someone somewhere out there find all this helpful or at least interesting.
EDIT 06/08/2012: I have discovered that this post is still regularly read and searched for in google. Thank you everyone for your comments. Sorry to those who I didn't contact. Blogger seems to have stopped alerting me of comments. I'll be sure to fix this.
I think I will do a follow up to this post soon now that I have a better idea of what my year in XM and traveling cost. Also if you would like another reference for cost of living in XM (since I didn't do a good job of regular updates), you can check out this post about the cost of produce and eating in XM or this one that about my first run of the mill shopping excursion. If you are interested in my living arrangements while there, you can have a look at this post, about my apartment while living there. Thanks all for reading!
When I was trying to make my decision about whether or not to come to Xiamen, I spent some time surfing the web trying to get an accurate picture of what my budget would need to be like in order live comfortably.
It turns out this information is harder to find then I thought, so I figured I would start keeping a weekly record of it myself and make it available on the blog so that it would be accessible to anyone else that wanted to travel or live here. It certainly would have saved me some stress had it been available to me!
I should summarize my trip getting here, then I will start with weekly updates about living.
Getting too Xiamen
Costs
1 Way Flight: $636
Arranged Pick up from the Airport: $22
4 Nights in Bed and Breakfast in HK: $260
6 Months Travelers Insurance: $390
Chinese 1 Month Double Entry Travel Visa: $300
Sight Seeing in HK and Eating: $100
Flight to Xiamen: $216
Virtual Private Network (for getting around Chinese firewall): $29.50
Total (with a few small international transaction fees and bottles of water to round it off): $2,000
Many of the costs could easily now be avoided in a variety of ways. Getting the right visa in the US for starters would eliminate the need to fly to HK all together and all the costs associated with it. (Very much depends on the purpose of your visit) For my arrangement and F visa works nicely.
The first 2 1/2 months will have to be one crude summary since I didn't keep very good records.
Moving in and Living
(based on 6.8 to 1 Exchange rate)
Monthly rent for a 1 bed room one bath apartment in Huli Area: $191.17
Included in the apartment were:
- Refrigerator
- Bed
- Washing Machine
- Couch
- Dresser
- Table
- TV
Hot Plate and Toaster Oven: $100
Christmas Presents for coming home: $250
Other stuff including dishes, transportation, food, and cleaning stuff, and going out: about $800
Total: about $1600
This is pretty vague, but the total is accurate because I know my monthly Salary is $800 (quite a good salary by Xiamen standards, English teachers here make about $730. I also read somewhere that $800 is about what a law school grad can expect to make starting salary here) and by the time I left to come home for break a had not taken any money out of my US account since my trip to HK. Of course I will be more specific from here on out since that is the point of this section of the blog.
Grand total of living and traveling for 3 months: $3600
(Note this does not include my flight home which was paid for by the company but would have cost me $600 had I not been coming back)
Any suggestions on a format would be great. I hope someone somewhere out there find all this helpful or at least interesting.
EDIT 06/08/2012: I have discovered that this post is still regularly read and searched for in google. Thank you everyone for your comments. Sorry to those who I didn't contact. Blogger seems to have stopped alerting me of comments. I'll be sure to fix this.
I think I will do a follow up to this post soon now that I have a better idea of what my year in XM and traveling cost. Also if you would like another reference for cost of living in XM (since I didn't do a good job of regular updates), you can check out this post about the cost of produce and eating in XM or this one that about my first run of the mill shopping excursion. If you are interested in my living arrangements while there, you can have a look at this post, about my apartment while living there. Thanks all for reading!
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Mechanical Bulls. Jazz, Che Guevara, and Free Mojitos
All that and more in Haiwan park this weekend!
(love this entrance!)
This past weekend Chris got to have his first proper weekend out (with out Jet lag) in Xiamen.
Friday night we met up with some Couch Surfers to catch some live music and half priced Heineken at JJ's Bar and Grill. Yet another ex-pat hang out. It was spur of the moment, but a fair amount of people showed up and we met some of our first non CS ex-pats.
The band was from Iceland. They had a pretty mellow grove that made for good back ground music while people chatted. JJ's is owned by a guy from Tennessee and is modeled after a Texas Steak house. It even has an old Ford out front, Mechanical bull to ride, and a big neon WELCOME TO TEXAS sign.
We also got dinner at a place next door called Havana. We knew it was new but we didn't realize that we happened to be the first customers to order food since they opened that day as a test run for their grand opening the next day! We both got chicken burritos and they were quite good. The bar tender there was a British guy who might have been 26-27. He told us come back for the Grand Opening the next day.
So we did. Along we CS friend CheFung from Hawaii who came to our first meeting and happened to be passing threw Xiamen again.
Havana was a blast. Live jazz band and free monitors margaritas and sangria all night helped a lot!
Just a good weekend over all!
More later.
(love this entrance!)
This past weekend Chris got to have his first proper weekend out (with out Jet lag) in Xiamen.
Friday night we met up with some Couch Surfers to catch some live music and half priced Heineken at JJ's Bar and Grill. Yet another ex-pat hang out. It was spur of the moment, but a fair amount of people showed up and we met some of our first non CS ex-pats.
The band was from Iceland. They had a pretty mellow grove that made for good back ground music while people chatted. JJ's is owned by a guy from Tennessee and is modeled after a Texas Steak house. It even has an old Ford out front, Mechanical bull to ride, and a big neon WELCOME TO TEXAS sign.
We also got dinner at a place next door called Havana. We knew it was new but we didn't realize that we happened to be the first customers to order food since they opened that day as a test run for their grand opening the next day! We both got chicken burritos and they were quite good. The bar tender there was a British guy who might have been 26-27. He told us come back for the Grand Opening the next day.
So we did. Along we CS friend CheFung from Hawaii who came to our first meeting and happened to be passing threw Xiamen again.
Havana was a blast. Live jazz band and free monitors margaritas and sangria all night helped a lot!
Just a good weekend over all!
More later.
Monday, March 15, 2010
The Fragrance Explodes the Squid Circle
There is a " coffee shop" located right down the street from work that we discovered the other day
I say "Coffee Shop" but it is not at all like anything that we would normally call a coffee shop back home. It is called a coffee shop simply because it happens to serve coffee (along with a a varity of other interesting things as you will see)
You would think a blog post about a coffee shop would have something to do with coffee, this one does not.
This blog post is about just about everything BUT the coffee and is much more how one would go about describing everything else that is available to order in English.
The owner was nice enough to have the menu translated into English so all of us foreigners could know what to order. So your goal by the end of this post should be to know what you want from the menu.
First up on the menu the Entrees. I have split the list in half so that it is easier to read. A few of notable ones: "Harsh Sand Fish Maw" "Emperor Lion" " Does the Pot Fish Head" " Over turns the Heavens Red the Fish Head" "Unwearied Effort However Beef" and "The Peasant Family Braises the Stomach Point"
Next came the "Dutch Fragrant/ Bamboo Tube Food Section. Another honorable mention with: "Dutch Fragrant Fin-less Eel Food"
Some tasty gruels:'
Of course I should include the name sake of this blog under "Fine Snack"
And let us not for Get the "Fire Iron" and "The Water Boils the Series" Which includes "Wild Mountain fungus seafood pot" "The Water Boils the Frog" and my all time favorite "Incites Tinker Pans"
Here is what we chose:
"The country side cooks the meat"
What would you like?!
I say "Coffee Shop" but it is not at all like anything that we would normally call a coffee shop back home. It is called a coffee shop simply because it happens to serve coffee (along with a a varity of other interesting things as you will see)
You would think a blog post about a coffee shop would have something to do with coffee, this one does not.
This blog post is about just about everything BUT the coffee and is much more how one would go about describing everything else that is available to order in English.
The owner was nice enough to have the menu translated into English so all of us foreigners could know what to order. So your goal by the end of this post should be to know what you want from the menu.
First up on the menu the Entrees. I have split the list in half so that it is easier to read. A few of notable ones: "Harsh Sand Fish Maw" "Emperor Lion" " Does the Pot Fish Head" " Over turns the Heavens Red the Fish Head" "Unwearied Effort However Beef" and "The Peasant Family Braises the Stomach Point"
Next came the "Dutch Fragrant/ Bamboo Tube Food Section. Another honorable mention with: "Dutch Fragrant Fin-less Eel Food"
Some tasty gruels:'
Of course I should include the name sake of this blog under "Fine Snack"
And let us not for Get the "Fire Iron" and "The Water Boils the Series" Which includes "Wild Mountain fungus seafood pot" "The Water Boils the Frog" and my all time favorite "Incites Tinker Pans"
Here is what we chose:
"The country side cooks the meat"
What would you like?!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Zongshang Street (Walking Street)
Well I typed out 3/4 of the blog post disconnected from the internet and then I updated firefox and lost it all. Grrrr I hate retyping things.
Basically Chris and I went to Zongshang Street (a street closed to cars in the center of Xiamen) and walked around looking for a guitar string and a keyboard.
Zongshang Street is one of the oldest "roads" in Xiamen. It was where the British established a settlement when they first started opening up China to trade.
Xiamen may be better known to some as Amoy, and was one of the early places where trade was allowed.
It is now full of little shops, vendors, and restaurants and a pretty neat place to spend a night wandering.
Here are some photos of assorted shops and vendors.
Food vendor
After at a particularly bad attempt at trying to order food at a buffet (The girl we dealt with will not be my partner if we ever play charades! She also continued to speak very rapid Chinese even after asking her to slow down and and telling her we didn't understand in Chinese) we decided to to try Xiamen KFC to see if it was any different and for ease of ordering. It wasn't. (but it was easy to order)
After we walked around a bit and I amused my self by taking pictures of all of the obvious attempts of Chinese businesses to knock off American brands.
Examples:
"Pearl Boy" and obvious knock off of "Playboy" bunny and all, sold mostly women clothing.
This company sold running shoes. I'd wager that swoosh is identical to the Nike swoosh if you flipped it over.
Crocodile sold men's work clothing. Their Croc logo looks just a liiiiitle bit like that of Lacoste.
http://brandnoise.typepad.com/brand_noise/images/lacoste_logo.gif
This one didn't seem to be knocking anyone off, but I had to take a picture for obvious reasons. Unfortunately it was just a logo. The store only sold bed sheets that didn't even have dinos on them.
After some more wandering we found a little coffee shop (no where near as common as it is in the US or Europe) so we decided to stop and try it out.
It was actually fantastic and they served Hagan-das to boot! I was happy.
Afterward we walked around a bit more...
That finally took us over to where the ferry leaves for Gulangyu.
Over all fun night. Nice to get to show Chris around a little bit.
More to come.
Basically Chris and I went to Zongshang Street (a street closed to cars in the center of Xiamen) and walked around looking for a guitar string and a keyboard.
Zongshang Street is one of the oldest "roads" in Xiamen. It was where the British established a settlement when they first started opening up China to trade.
Xiamen may be better known to some as Amoy, and was one of the early places where trade was allowed.
It is now full of little shops, vendors, and restaurants and a pretty neat place to spend a night wandering.
Here are some photos of assorted shops and vendors.
Food vendor
After at a particularly bad attempt at trying to order food at a buffet (The girl we dealt with will not be my partner if we ever play charades! She also continued to speak very rapid Chinese even after asking her to slow down and and telling her we didn't understand in Chinese) we decided to to try Xiamen KFC to see if it was any different and for ease of ordering. It wasn't. (but it was easy to order)
After we walked around a bit and I amused my self by taking pictures of all of the obvious attempts of Chinese businesses to knock off American brands.
Examples:
"Pearl Boy" and obvious knock off of "Playboy" bunny and all, sold mostly women clothing.
This company sold running shoes. I'd wager that swoosh is identical to the Nike swoosh if you flipped it over.
Crocodile sold men's work clothing. Their Croc logo looks just a liiiiitle bit like that of Lacoste.
http://brandnoise.typepad.com/brand_noise/images/lacoste_logo.gifThis one didn't seem to be knocking anyone off, but I had to take a picture for obvious reasons. Unfortunately it was just a logo. The store only sold bed sheets that didn't even have dinos on them.
After some more wandering we found a little coffee shop (no where near as common as it is in the US or Europe) so we decided to stop and try it out.
It was actually fantastic and they served Hagan-das to boot! I was happy.
Afterward we walked around a bit more...
That finally took us over to where the ferry leaves for Gulangyu.
Over all fun night. Nice to get to show Chris around a little bit.
More to come.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The Office
No! Not with Jim and Pam, MY office.
Some people have been asking me about where I work so I figured I would post some pictures. Xiamen ENRY Co. ltd is the name of the company. It is a manufacturing and export company that specializes in the production of luggage, back packs, and hand bags along with a few other assorted varieties. If you are interested or if by chance you should happen to need a whole lot of bags made have a look at our website.
Its nothing too exciting really, but there are some distinct and interesting differences.
Everything about this picture is what you would normally see when you first come into the office except that the person at the front desk usually has quite a bit more affiliation with the flag on the left then on the one on the right. (Though Chris gets told he "looks more Chinese" all the time. He has decided its a compliment.)
Then as you turn right you see a few things that you might not see in a normal American office. Note the Buddhist shrine located on the right. There is incense, fruit, and a statue of Buddha on the inside. There is also a Tea set that we use frequently when we meet with customers and the factory foremen.
Then there is the super exciting area where we spend out days. Everyone else is out too lunch, but Chris is still plugging away...
Then we arrive at my desk. Apparently some where along the line I became a Mac fanboy. Nothing to exciting here just some pictures of the folks and friend, a photo copy of my diploma (since I haven't been able to see the real one yet!), and my Tiger calendar haha! (In case you didn't put 2 and 2 together, 2010 is in fact the year of the Tiger)
And this is my lovely view of everyone in the office. The windowed room is of course Lindon's office.
And then there is the newbies desk. It still needs some character building.
And that is about it for the office. I was wary of taking photos in the factory... I am not sure Lindon would appreciate that, though there are a few on the website if you care to look.
Anyway, not the most exciting post but I thought it might be interesting to others who are working in offices to see what they are like in China!
More later.
Some people have been asking me about where I work so I figured I would post some pictures. Xiamen ENRY Co. ltd is the name of the company. It is a manufacturing and export company that specializes in the production of luggage, back packs, and hand bags along with a few other assorted varieties. If you are interested or if by chance you should happen to need a whole lot of bags made have a look at our website.
Its nothing too exciting really, but there are some distinct and interesting differences.
Everything about this picture is what you would normally see when you first come into the office except that the person at the front desk usually has quite a bit more affiliation with the flag on the left then on the one on the right. (Though Chris gets told he "looks more Chinese" all the time. He has decided its a compliment.)
Then as you turn right you see a few things that you might not see in a normal American office. Note the Buddhist shrine located on the right. There is incense, fruit, and a statue of Buddha on the inside. There is also a Tea set that we use frequently when we meet with customers and the factory foremen.
Then there is the super exciting area where we spend out days. Everyone else is out too lunch, but Chris is still plugging away...
Then we arrive at my desk. Apparently some where along the line I became a Mac fanboy. Nothing to exciting here just some pictures of the folks and friend, a photo copy of my diploma (since I haven't been able to see the real one yet!), and my Tiger calendar haha! (In case you didn't put 2 and 2 together, 2010 is in fact the year of the Tiger)
And this is my lovely view of everyone in the office. The windowed room is of course Lindon's office.
And then there is the newbies desk. It still needs some character building.
And that is about it for the office. I was wary of taking photos in the factory... I am not sure Lindon would appreciate that, though there are a few on the website if you care to look.
Anyway, not the most exciting post but I thought it might be interesting to others who are working in offices to see what they are like in China!
More later.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Chris' Arrival and Company Dinner Party
"If you could have told us this is where we would be right now a year ago, would you believe yourself?"
Straight from the mouth of Chris, who just arrived here on Saturday! I couldn't have said it better my self.
Its hard to believe that just a year ago this whole adventure was just a couple of emails and at best a shot in the dark for the both of us and now, here we are!
You can read Chris' take on his arrival on his blog, which I now have linked along with a few others, on the side of this blog.
He was supposed arrive on Friday March 5th on the same flight I took, but at around 10PM I received a distress call from Beijing saying he was stranded there for the night and would be showing up around 11 the next day.
Fortunately he everything worked out and we meet up with him easily enough the next morning.
After he arrived we went for a quick lunched. (I briefly had him worried we were eating frog strew, which wasn't to much of a leap since there were about a dozen of them in a tank 5 feet away.)
Most of the afternoon was spent unpacking and napping, but at 6 o:clock Lindon had arranged for us to have our annual ENRY dinner party so everyone could meet.
The place we ate was called "The little Sheep" (for good reason). It was actually some of my favorite Chinese food so far. Around 15 people joined us in the end. All of ENRY plus some of Lindon's college friends.
The restaurant style was similar to broth based fondue in Europe. Each person orders a separate broth that stays heated. Mine was mainly garlic and hot pepper based. Then, a HUGE variety of things to cook in the broth is ordered and you get to pick and choose between what you want. Here is a picture of the way it was set up.
But, first there were some appetizers...
Barnacles mmmmmm
and Goose Neck!
Then comes the MASSIVE amount of food. I would hate to do dishes at a place like this. By my count including the dishes we ate off of and not including chop sticks and spoons there where 138 dishes from our table alone!
Thing that where included:
Lotus Root
Potato
Kelp
Lamb
Lamb Intestine
Noodles
Tofu
Lettuce
Cilantro
Cauliflower
Carrots
Beef
There were probably a few others that I forgot but those were the main ones.
Here is a photo of everyone eating together.
Afterward we sat around talking and play "the dice game" or "Bullshit" which is the direct Chinese translation. One of my coworkers challenged everyone around the table to a round.
After, we did a little private room Karaoke with a few coworkers. Chris found "Let it Be" by the Beatles to sing. I sand my staple, Superstition by Stevie Wonder and Lost by Coldplay. This was a new place and only had about about 3 dozen US artists with the majority of them being a similar genre close to Backstreet Boys, Michel Jackson, and Madonna.
Chris was pretty jet lagged by around 10 oclock so we headed back early and got a good nights rest. We are finally pretty settled in now and the appartment is starting to look pretty good. We got Chris a fork and knife today so he is officially living in luxury!
More soon of course. Stay good.
Straight from the mouth of Chris, who just arrived here on Saturday! I couldn't have said it better my self.
Its hard to believe that just a year ago this whole adventure was just a couple of emails and at best a shot in the dark for the both of us and now, here we are!
You can read Chris' take on his arrival on his blog, which I now have linked along with a few others, on the side of this blog.
He was supposed arrive on Friday March 5th on the same flight I took, but at around 10PM I received a distress call from Beijing saying he was stranded there for the night and would be showing up around 11 the next day.
Fortunately he everything worked out and we meet up with him easily enough the next morning.
After he arrived we went for a quick lunched. (I briefly had him worried we were eating frog strew, which wasn't to much of a leap since there were about a dozen of them in a tank 5 feet away.)
Most of the afternoon was spent unpacking and napping, but at 6 o:clock Lindon had arranged for us to have our annual ENRY dinner party so everyone could meet.
The place we ate was called "The little Sheep" (for good reason). It was actually some of my favorite Chinese food so far. Around 15 people joined us in the end. All of ENRY plus some of Lindon's college friends.
The restaurant style was similar to broth based fondue in Europe. Each person orders a separate broth that stays heated. Mine was mainly garlic and hot pepper based. Then, a HUGE variety of things to cook in the broth is ordered and you get to pick and choose between what you want. Here is a picture of the way it was set up.
But, first there were some appetizers...
Barnacles mmmmmm
and Goose Neck!
Then comes the MASSIVE amount of food. I would hate to do dishes at a place like this. By my count including the dishes we ate off of and not including chop sticks and spoons there where 138 dishes from our table alone!
Thing that where included:
Lotus Root
Potato
Kelp
Lamb
Lamb Intestine
Noodles
Tofu
Lettuce
Cilantro
Cauliflower
Carrots
Beef
There were probably a few others that I forgot but those were the main ones.
Here is a photo of everyone eating together.
Afterward we sat around talking and play "the dice game" or "Bullshit" which is the direct Chinese translation. One of my coworkers challenged everyone around the table to a round.
After, we did a little private room Karaoke with a few coworkers. Chris found "Let it Be" by the Beatles to sing. I sand my staple, Superstition by Stevie Wonder and Lost by Coldplay. This was a new place and only had about about 3 dozen US artists with the majority of them being a similar genre close to Backstreet Boys, Michel Jackson, and Madonna.
Chris was pretty jet lagged by around 10 oclock so we headed back early and got a good nights rest. We are finally pretty settled in now and the appartment is starting to look pretty good. We got Chris a fork and knife today so he is officially living in luxury!
More soon of course. Stay good.
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