-Patrick Rothfuss
The quote above suggests that all explicit (recorded) knowledge is imperfect. While the validity of the statement can certainly be debated, it brings to mind one very important fact as I write this: anything I record here is an imperfect translation of everything that I see and experience.
When I arrived at the East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST) and was given the key to my dorm, I quickly found out that you need to sign up for internet service with a company called China Telecom. Conveniently, they have a shop on campus. Inconveniently, it's a state-owned company.
The Chinese can pull of a lot of impressive feats and we all know the stereotypes saying that Asians are good at math or violin or whatever it is they're doing really. And of course, in some situations, they are (stereotypes usually appear for a reason). I think the best example of excellent work by the Chinese that I've encountered so far is the Shanghai metro system. Opened in only 18 years ago in 1995, the system already boasts 12 lines and with 275 miles of track is the third largest system in the world, with extensions still ongoing. So it's pretty apparent that when the Chinese government wants to get something done, they do it well.
On the other hand, running a business is not something they do so well. I arrived at the storefront with passport in hand and 400rmb set to pay for 5 months of internet service. At the time, all of the Chinese students were just returning from winter break and the tiny store was packed, and with only 5 workers visible (two of whom appeared to be doing nothing) the mob of students never seemed to thin out. We finally fought our way to a card table that seemed to be thrown up earlier that morning to accommodate the influx of paperwork and were told it would take 1 day for us to receive our usernames and passwords to access the internet. We gave them a cell phone number and they assured us we would receive a text message with this information at some point in the next 24 hours.
Fast forward four days: we haven't received any message. So, we decided it was time to find out what was going on. We wade back into the sea of arms waving photocopies of myriad ID's and fought our way to the single person who spoke English, though he was too busy looking busy and directed us to a the gentleman at the card table. We were somehow able to indicate that we were looking for our usernames and he began riffling through a stack of papers. After glancing at all of them he came to the conclusion that he didn't have them for us. At this point we almost walked away, but decided to give it one more shot and ask a different lady. We gave her our Chinese names and in all of 30 seconds she found our usernames and passwords in a giant excel database. Apparently they hadn't gotten around to sending out the text messages yet.
Next time I'm told something will only take 24 hours while here, I know to take that info with a grain of salt.
Pictures are uploaded! Click here! Or, you know, the giant button that says photos at the top of this page. While looking at them, you'll quickly notice that I'm no photographer, and some of them aren't quite cropped correctly in the gallery.
The majority of the pictures currently posted (as of March 9th, 2013) were taken from a river cruise on the Huangpu river. Several were taken the day before from the edge of the river. The other two miscellaneous pictures show the view from my room's balcony. Look for more details about these tours later in another post - should be up soon.
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