A couple cups of strong coffee and I’ve recovered from my 5th Chinese New Year‘s Eve in China. Despite living in Suzhou-Singapore Industrial Park (SIP) last year as well, this was the first time we celebrated the holiday in this district. Normally I would just hit Shiquan Jie (Suzhou’s bar street) for the big event, as its location in the downtown core puts it smack dab in the middle of all the action.

Because of our pregnancy, and a newborn in our tribe, we decided to keep things close to home this year and just had friends over for dinner and more friends over for drinks.

SIP, or as it’s come to be called in our little group, “China Lite”, is unique in that the majority of the residents are not locals. Many of those that live here are Westerners, North East Asians, HKers or Taiwanese. What’s more, a solid amount of the Chinese contingent are out-of-towners who simply work in wealthy Suzhou. What this means for holidays is that SIP becomes a bit of a ghost town as many head home for the holidays (or SE Asia, if you’re a laowai).

There are a lot of things that make life in SIP much, much better than many of the places I’ve lived in China, but the lack of an explosion-filled buildup for midnight is not one of them. We hedged our bets on something exciting happening down at Jinji Hu, the lake a block or two away from us, but didn’t find much after getting there. There were a few impressive displays in the distance and the night wasn’t exactly void of fireworks, but when I look back on previous years, this was definitely the tamest.

Fortunately we had what was important; friends, family, food and rum!

The other thing that might have dampened festivities was that Suzhou was hit with a relatively massive amount of icy snow last night. Walking back from the lake it was surreal seeing all the cars covered in white. Suzhou rarely gets snow, and usually the few flakes you might see fluttering through the air have disappeared before hitting the ground. But here are some pics of what I woke up to this morning:

The snow is reminiscent of January two years ago when snow virtual shut down the city.

Our dog Button hardly knows what to do with the stuff, timidly stepping on the now-crunchy and white grass to do her morning business. I’m hopeful that it might get a bit colder and give us some nice fluffy stuff so she can run and play in it, but more than likely it will just stay this icy, slushy sleet and/or melt away.

But that’s all the more reason for me to curl up in my cozy apartment and just relax on this holiday Sunday. All the best to you and yours in the year of the tiger. 春节快乐.

NOTE: Just after writing this I looked outside and large fluffy flakes are coming down — there’s hope yet for a (non-hospital-needed) snowball fight in Suzhou!

Polce and security guards talk to a journalist near the crime scene at Singha Plaza.

Murders in the news are as common as the weather report, and are rarely read with any greater attention. It is not often that they touch your life in some way, even if just remotely.

Unfortunately, such is not the case with Suzhou’s most recent homicide, as it happened only a couple hundred metres from where I sleep, and to someone I’ve (if only peripherally) very likely met.

This past Wednesday morning the bloodied and naked body of a girl in her early 20s was found in her Singha Plaza (Xīn Dū GuǎngChǎng) apartment. Despite sharing the apartment with 7-8 other girls, none of them had heard a thing. The body was found when her roommate (as in shared her room) returned home in the morning.

While the news reports only indicated that she was a cashier at a “Western” restaurant (of which Singha Plaza is a long string of), I had heard from another friend that she worked at La Rose — a decent restaurant Maggie and I frequent regularly.

It wasn’t until yesterday (Saturday) that the killer was caught a few blocks away in the Four Seasons (Sì Jì Jiāyuán) apartment complex. Aparently the police had known since Wednesday that he was hiding out somewhere in the mass of upper-income apartments, and were sitting on the exits. Yesterday, after the owner of a vacant apartment on the 21st floor attempted to enter it and found it locked from the inside, the drama began to unfold.

The apartment owner called the police, who had been waiting for just such notice. With the police now surrounding the building, the guy threatened to jump and save the courts the trouble. After three hours of negotiations, and a giant safety pad being put in the jump zone, the suspect surrendered – butcher knife in hand.

Though I’ve not yet read what the relationship was between the victim and the suspect, reports indicated he used to be head of the security guards for my apartment complex, but left more than a year ago and was most recently working for a restaurant in the same strip of restaurants that the victim worked at (it wasn’t revealed if it was the same restaurant or not).

Now, before this post goes into Googleland and starts creeping up on searches from people looking for info about Suzhou, let me say that Suzhou, and China at large, is one of the safer places a foreigner can live in – and a marked improvement over many of our own countries. Though theft is rife, violent crimes are no higher here than any place else, and arguably lower than many. Being mugged is uncommon, and being anything “at gun point” is almost unheard of.

My point in blogging about this is not to showcase the seedier side of the city, but to simply comment on the creepiness of having something so horrible happen so close to home. All I can really say is how badly I feel for that girl, her family and her friends; and how glad I am that the suspect was caught and is not lurking around my neighbourhood anymore.

[UPDATE 7pm May 10/09] Just a quick update, caught the Suzhou news on this. Looks like the motive, perhaps unsurprisingly, was unrequited love. The guy had written love letters all over the walls inside her apartment building. She apparently had turned him down and suffering humiliation and a loss of face he killed her. What a fucking tragedy. Truly.

The list, compiled by New York-based human resources company ORC Worldwide, states the major reasons for giving Suzhou the thumbs down are pollution and a lack of culture & recreation facilities. Other problems included disease/sanitation, medical facilities, education facilities, and availability of goods and services.

It needs to be asked: has ORC Worldwide ever even been to Suzhou?

Granted, their list was compiled for BusinessWeek and specifically for an article about hardship pay, but really?

From the report:

While Suzhou is famous among Chinese as a beautiful garden city, ORC analysts are less impressed. The eastern Chinese city near Shanghai “can be a difficult place for expatriates” because of the pollution and the limited opportunities for culture and recreation.

Now, I’m not receiving any sort of hardship pay to be here, so maybe not the report’s target audience, but I would consider myself an expat and I’ve lived in Suzhou for some time now, so let me tackle these one by one:

Pollution: I will concede that pollution is a problem, as it is in virtually every 2nd tier Chinese city. That Suzhou appears on the list, while Shanghai and Beijing don’t (both having, in my opinion, worse air quality), is a bit baffling.

Lack of culture & recreation facilities: Huh? Did they miss the 150,000 sqm Suzhou Science and Cultural Arts Center (SSCAS)? On top of being home to a large cinema (with English language films and an IMAX screen), it also contains a large live theatre that routinely features symphonies, Celtic dancers and recently played host to Elton John’s Aida. If that’s not enough to keep you entertained, how about any one of the bazillion expat-focused bars. Pool halls. Suzhou Kunqu opera. Bowling (at least two locations in the city I know of)? A plethora of gyms and swimming pools. Any of the UNESCO World Heritage worthy gardens. A museum designed by world-renowned architect IM Pei. A good number of lakes and mountains to hike around.

But then maybe the hardship pay lot are a hard to entertain bunch.

Disease/Sanitation: I’m no expert on either, but I don’t imagine it’s any worse than any other city in China.

Medical facilities: Chinese hospital visits and Chinese bank visits will go on my grave as two things I never learned to love. Despite that, I’ve been to Suzhou’s hospitals (several of them) and though I wouldn’t treat a dying goldfish at some of them – SIP’s Kowloon seems decent enough to get this scratched from the list.

Education facilities: With a number of my friends working for several of the international schools here I take a bit of offense to this. SSIS, Dulwich and EtonHouse are all well-respected international schools offering accredited curricula.

Availability of goods and services: This may be the last offender, but it is the one that proves unequivocally that the ORC folks had their heads up their asses when they assessed Suzhou. Granted, the rare expat that lives downtown might have a hard time finding goods from home. But as most expats live in the SIP or SND districts, I just can’t imagine the ORC surveyors did their homework properly.

A stones throw from my house are a variety of international restaurants (Thai, Tex-Mex, burgers, Indian, Korean, Japanese, European – you name it), a foreign import supermarket, a foreign-run dentist, a Starbucks, a foreign-language bookstore and a Cold Stone Creamery ice-cream shop. If those things don’t suit my fancy, I simply order delivery pizza from Melrose (2-for-1 Tuesdays!), delivery subs from Subway, or delivery groceries. On the odd occasion I actually go out and “shop”, I’ve got two massive supermarkets a 10RMB ($1.50) cab ride away – and a soon to open Walmart.

But then maybe the folks that require “hardship” pay to take a job overseas are especially hard to please.

The full list, though if Suzhou is any example, it’s about as useless as a Chinese typewriter (I’m still trying to coin this phrase):

Very High Risk
1. Lagos, Nigeria
2. Jakarta, Indonesia
3. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
4. Almaty, Kazakhstan

High Risk

5. Mumbai, India
6. New Delhi, India
7. Nairobi, Kenya
8. Bogota, Colombia
9. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
10. Chennai, India
11. Hanoi, Vietnam
12. Guangzhou, China: Lists “phyiscal remoteness as a problem, and then lauds its proximity to Hong Kong as a “major plus”. WTF?
13. Tianjin, China: Report says “With limited availability of international flights, Tianjin can feel remote” – yet Beijing is 30 minutes away on the fast train – and from there the world. WTF?
14. Suzhou, China
15. Qingdao, China
16. Shenzhen, China
17. Bangalore, India

Medium Risk

18. Cairo, Egypt
19. Kiev, Ukraine
20. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

One last thing. The report stated: “Santo Domingo is the worst-ranking city in the Western Hemisphere, according to ORC. ‘While the pleasant environs of the Caribbean are a plus, hurricanes, power failures, poor roads, crime and the threat of disease are drawbacks to this location.’ Crime, natural disasters, poor roads and (legitimate) threats of disease and it’s five cities above Suzhou? WTF?

(h/t @ednaczhou)

The site offers home delivery of groceries in and around the Jinji Lake/SIP area of Suzhou. Yeah, we just click, click, click and hit send and magically a man appears the next day with our groceries. Blows my fucking mind.

Now, I’ve heard of similar services back home, but have had little cause to use them. Shopping in Canada is about as stressful as a yoga class. You show up, listen to a bit of Musak, casually consider your health for 45 minutes and then drive home.

A trip to the supermarket in China is … like my fat ass doing yoga. Uncomfortable, painful, awkward, and filled with the concern that I may end up seriously maiming others around me.

I’ve talked about my love/hate of Chinese supermarkets previously, and so wont rehash it all here. Needless to say, I avoid shopping as much as possible.

As Maggie largely handles all the shopping (in part because of our new cooking arrangement), and for a long time – like most things “China” – it didn’t get to her.

However, it is impossible not to see a transition in my wife from the somewhat sheltered person I met in Jinzhou to the woman she is today. Sociologists would have a field day with her. She’s a blossoming bougeois bouquet and, for better or worse, there ain’t no going back.

As such, she (like me) despises trips to the supermarket now, and routinely returns from Saturday afternoon shopping saying, “it’s like a damn war!”

Enter 5jshop.com – the bilingual, QQ-connected solution to all our problems (of a shopanistic nature).

We were a bit apprehensive about the service when it was suggested to us by our great new friends (and new Suzhou bloggers) Ric and Gin – how could we not be? Reasonably priced groceries, fresh from the market to your door, and free delivery? Surely it’s too good to be true.

Well, we must be cashing in karma chips, because our delivery yesterday sealed it. No rotten or wilted week-old celery, no funky smelling mystery meats. We got fresh, clean veg; still-frozen (and sealed) chicken breast; ripe fruit; high-quality pork… delivered at our door. And, factoring in the added costs of taxis and impulse buying, the whole deal is going to end up saving us money.

Maggie might need a bit of work with the ordering system though, as we looked a bit silly ordering one, solitary banana.

Turns out her fears were not unfounded, and last week the whole business closed (it was one part yoga studio and one part female beautification factory).

Details of what exactly happened are sketchy, but best I’ve been able to piece together is that about six months ago the owner of the business realized the place was going down hill (the yoga side was the only side making money), so thinking that throwing money at the problem would solve things, she brought on some friends as partners.

The partners all invested a bunch of cash and suddenly things were back on track (a track the led nowhere good). As nothing management- or business-wise changed, sure enough once the newly infused funds ran out, the business started to tank again.

Now, knowing she couldn’t bring on more partners, the owner tried to cop out of the venture by saying she needed more time to spend with her daughter. She kindly offered to “give” the business to the partners. The partners, not being entirely clueless, realized that she was leaving behind a business that wasn’t making any money, had large debts and owed members a considerable sum of money/classes.

And things went to shit from there. There were vocal arguments, actual fist fights, hired thugs, police intervention, etc. All the while Maggie and the other girls that worked there kept asking “so, are we getting paid?”, as the company keeps one month of salary as “security” to stop employees from not giving notice and just ditching on payday (deterrent or not, it happened ALL the time).

After checking with a lawyer friend of mine and learning that there is actual legal recourse and labour laws here in the Middle Kingdom, Maggie and the girls went down to the labour office and filed a report. This scared the boss into paying them off that day, which essentially took Maggie out of the whole messy situation.

Her students, however, aren’t so lucky. As they’re owed their money back for 6-12 month memberships they’ve prepaid, they’re now taking Maggie’s former boss to court (and have even gotten the local TV station involved). As to whether or not they’ll ever see a jiao of their spent money is, I feel, pretty doubtful. Water from a rock, as the cliche goes.

ALL of that to say, Maggie went from gainfully employed to sans job in a blink. Fortunately for Maggie her skills are 100% transferable and in decent demand.

However, rather than jump back into working at a studio (that could again pull the proverbial yoga mat out from under her), she’s decided to take her private lessons full-time.

She’s been doing a decent amount of private lessons here in SIP for the last year or so, but is hoping that she’ll be able to rustle up enough business to not need to head back into the employ of idiot lao bans.

So, I know I’ve written about Maggie’s classes before, but if you are interested in English-language yoga classes in Suzhou/SIP be sure to check out her newly created Web site (designed by none other than yours truly).

And for those not in Suzhou, stay tuned to her site, as she’s planning to put together weekly instructional videos with a different yoga posture, and what it’s good for, each week.

The tradeoff is that it rains non-stop. We go from rainy season to typhoon season back to rainy season. It is a stark contrast to my days up in Dalian that, for all its brown-grassed winters, has a huge amount of sunshine.

Which makes this past week a bit of an anomaly. We’ve had almost seven days of straight sunshine.

Normally I wouldn’t complain – and I’m not. I swear, I’m not. But after paying our community’s groundskeeper to whipper-snip our backyard the other day, we discovered the long green grass on top was just a ruse, and underneath is nothing but dry straw-like lawn.

I can honestly say I never imagined that I’d be uttering the words “I wish I owned a sprinkler” while still living in China. But – there we are.

I turn 31 next week, and nothing drills home that age more than the fact that I am bitching about the amount of sunshine and wishing I had more lawn equipment.

Arg.

As it is fully furnished (I’ve yet to rent an apartment here that isn’t – though some call into question the definition of “fully”), yesterday we had to head over to the new place and meet with the landlady and realtor to make an itemized list of all the goodies the apartment comes with.

We had been somewhat nonchalant about getting it done, but the realtor impressed upon us the importance, as they’ve had landlords walk out with major appliances before the tenant moves in, and then deny they were ever in the agreement.

Things didn’t start off great, as on our arrival the first order of business was the issue of the extended cable (or satellite, I’m still not clear which it is) TV the owner of the apartment had already pre-paid for.

Maggie watches the odd show on Chinese TV, but mostly we get our fill from TV-on-DVD and so don’t have much need for even the basic cable package. As such, when the landlady informed us we were going to be required to pay an additional 210 RMB/mo., we were a bit annoyed.

She explained that we get HK MTV, CINEMAX, and some other all-caps names I recognized (CNN, BBC, etc.) and it was well worth the money. We explained we didn’t care, and if it was a payment we must make, it should have been outlined in the contract or at least discussed before we agreed to take the apartment.

That seemed to give her enough to go back to the owner with and say “hey, I tried”, as she quickly conceded and said it was no big deal.

Looks like we’ve got free cable.

Other than that, it was mostly just a lot of walking around and turning things on. I’ve noticed there’s a bit of an obsession with kicking the tires in this country. Not to say it’s not a completely practical thing to do, but it just seems to be taken to the extreme. Supermarkets have official testing stations where you can make sure your tea kettle or DVD player turns on. It’s always just left me wondering how useless a shop’s return policy is.

And in the case of our apartment, instead of putting my mind at ease by showing me everything works, it just made me wonder if this was going to be the grounds by which my landlord would eventually put on us that we should be the ones buying the new A/C unit: “Hey, it worked when you moved in.”

Getting a bit bored of following Maggie around and watching her turn on taps – and listing to the landlady explain to us the fantastic quality of the fixtures, I made a little video tour of our place.

We’ve not started packing yet, but have to admit, we’re both pretty geared to move. Though I’m sure the feeling of the place will change after we’ve lived in the neighbourhood a while, walking around the place now feels like we’re on vacation at some Floridian condo resort.

We’re shooting to have a house-warming BBQ shortly after moving in, so any readers in Suzhou (or better yet, in the neighbourhood), you’re welcome to swing by.

We’ve been talking about moving for quite a while now, and with our lease up next month, it was time to either piss or get off the pot… alright, there was no pots, and I wouldn’t piss in one anyway – but yeah, it was time to make a decision.

Our current place is right downtown, and the centrality of it was a huge deterrent for me wanting to move. As little as I actually get out, it is nice being two blocks from Shi Quan Jie, Suzhou’s most active bar street.

I also really like our neighborhood. We are in a modest but nice two-bedroom apartment that is in a reasonably nice community. However, when you take two steps outside the community into the alleyway our apartment backs onto and you are thrown back half a century into where the “other half” lives – and I like it.

There’s just something inherently cool about cheap Lanzhou la mian, late night majiang, listening to the canter of the whores coming home at 2 a.m., and walking by folks who are unabashedly brushing their teeth or washing their hair in the lane way. It keeps it real, yo.

Plus, there’s an element of nature here too. Not only is our little compound swelling with plant-life and air full of jasmine and osmanthus, but our complex backs onto the southern end of the large canal that surrounds the city. The canal bank hosts a nice park that holds more trees than I’ve seen elsewhere in the city proper.

It’s not a bad place to live.

Alas, as close as it is to downtown, it isn’t close to Maggie’s yoga studio, and as she’s the one who has to trek through the hectic Suzhou traffic four times a day in what will soon be furnace-like temperatures on a bus that is 4x too full, she’s got some pull in the decision.

But don’t get me wrong – I’m keen on moving too. We’re moving out to Suzhou Singapore Industrial Park (SIP) – the up-scale expat end of town. My new community is directly across the street from a Starbucks, and is virtually surrounded by Western restaurants and supermarkets selling everything that will make me question if I’m even in China anymore.

What’s more, we’ve found an awesome apartment that suits our needs perfectly.

We met with the realtor on Saturday, essentially on a whim, knowing we had to get the apartment hunting started eventually.

The place we had arranged to see was in the same large community as a good friend of mine lives in, so I had some idea what it might look like. Little did I know it would be two floors down from him in the exact same building – coincidences abound in this country.

I was pretty much sold on the place within two minutes of walking into it. It’s a relatively large place – two bedrooms + an office, two bathrooms, a nice living room with lots of sunlight and – get this – a backyard!

With little Addie now firmly entrenched in our lives, the yard was the clincher. We were hoping of our new place to provide us with at least a balcony she could get out and get some fresh air on, but to have an, albeit small, yard to run out into completely exceeded our expectations.

So, I’ll be sad to leave this place. Since moving in last January I’ve become quite attached to it. However, as this is the 24th place I’ve called “home” in my life, I’m no stranger to moving and am certainly looking forward to being able to have a proper BBQ.

As mentioned, we move in at the end of June. I’ll be posting video and photos of the place then, and may finally deliver on posting video of my neighborhood here before we leave. Any new neighbours out in SIP, get in touch and we’ll grab a cheap Tiger beer at Mr. Pizza’s.