Postcards from China

A couple updates added below on August 18.

This has nothing to do with the regular theme of this blog, but I think it’s a pretty neat tidbit and I don’t have any other blog to put it in.

I live near Seattle now, but I’m originally from (a farm near) a small town in the U.S. Heartland, Union City, Ohio.

Union City is actually two very small towns–Union City, Ohio and Union City, Indiana–with the OH/IN state line running through the middle of town. The combined population of these two Union Cities is just over 5,000, and according to the latest Census statistics, about 20% of the local population lives under the poverty line. Technically speaking, both towns should be in Ohio, but a surveying error in the 19th century split the town between the two states. When this mistake was discovered in the late 1970’s–during a follow-up survey to decide which side of town had jurisdiction over a prosecuting a fight that had spilled out from a bar onto the State Line street–everyone decided it would have been too much of a hassle to amend the results of the error, so the division was left to stand as is.

There have been a few claims to fame coming from Union City over the years.

Ohio’s 1993 high school “Mr. Football” Curtis Enis, later a Penn State standout and Chicago Bears short-timer, is from Union City, Ohio. I remember him as a little squirt who liked to sit behind our bench at varsity basketball games, but a 2005 Chicago Tribune article reported Enis as “currently working the night shift at an Ohio garage door factory” (source).

And oddly, so many “Curtis Enis” stories online list “Kilven” as one of his brothers, but I knew Kilven, whose last name is (was?) “Williams,” to be his cousin. And Annie Enis, who was in my class, I thought was Curtis’s sister, but she gets no mention in any of these stories, nor do any of the three or four other older sisters. Confusing. But Lincoln, Curtis’s dad–who burst into the locker room after a disappointing away game my senior year and yelled at Coach Courtney, “You’re a G*d D**n C**k S****r”–uh, yeah…I remember Lincoln.

Update 1: I ran Curtis’ name through Google, and even though a friend back home tells me the sign is still up at the outskirts of Union City that says, “Hometown of Ohio’s 1993 Mr. Football Curtis Enis,” Curtis unfortunately doesn’t fare too well in sports fans’ memories even now. Some say he’ll always be remembered most for promising hellfire and brimstone to friends and family a few weeks after his “conversion” and a couple hours after marrying his pregnant ex-strippper girlfriend. And just a few weeks ago, at a proudly rabid Chicago White Sox online forum, one person asks, “It seems like a lot of guys get a jersey with a younger guy/ rookies name on it to be ahead of the curve. Just wondering who turned out to be the biggest bust after you bought a jersey with there name all over it?” On page four of this still-running discussion, someone else answers, “a friend of mine had a curtis enis jersey…”. The next respondent says, “winner, no one need read anymore.”

Ouch.

Anyway, there are a few other names coming out of Union City you might actually recognize: (auto-play audio alert) Rick Derringer (you know his classic rock song “Rock and Roll Hootchie Koo” if nothing else); “The McCoys” (the first band Rick made it big with); and their biggest hit, the unofficial state song of Ohio, “Hang On Sloopy.”

I occasionally run “Union City” and the name of my high school through Google to see what turns up, and when I did that last night, I found this:

Another Union City native, Brian Bousman, is working on a documentary of the story and history of this song, “Hang On Sloopy,” which on October 2nd, 1965, replaced The Beatles’ “Yesterday” at the top of the Billboard magazine’s Top 100. Brian has posted an excerpt (narrated by Chris Hawkey; see below) online at YouTube.

(I recognize the name ‘Brian Bousman–maybe he was my childhood Sunday School teacher’s son? Update 2: I got in touch with Brian, and yes, his dad Keith was my Sunday School teacher when I was 11 or 12…and Brian was 2 or 3.)

The documentary is looking quite good; lend it your eyes and ears:

(And–though he’s not about to quit his day job–Rick has started a new side gig as a Florida real estate agent.)

Back to Chris Hawkey.

Chris’s older brother Mike was (along with Curtis’s sister Annie and 64 other goods folks) one of my Class of 1984 classmates.

I remember Chris more like this:

But Chris is now a Radio Personality and Singer in Minnesota who sometimes rubs elbows (and hips?–look for his left hand below) with the bold and the beautiful. Here he is at a fundraiser earlier this year with Desperate Housewife Teri Hatcher:

And here’s another video clip via YouTube with Chris singing a tune from his latest album and talking about his latest charitable venture (and Chris, what’s up with saying you’re from Indiana?):

Nice!

Union City. Not a bad place to be from, really.

But of course the greatest pure musical talent born and raised in the Union City/Darke County corner of Ohio is–I exaggerate not–my cousin D.A..

1. China is “quite relevant” to me and my life. Read this blog if you need more details.
2. I used to work for one of the world’s largest “corporate travel management” conglomerates.

These are the reasons I’ve chosen the headline for this entry that I have.

If you don’t have the background yet, my headline answers the question I asked yesterday, in response to this AP story.

I seem to have found the answer in a Tacoma News Tribune story, “Travel nightmare made in Taiyuan,”which the rest of the folks commenting on Mr. Nelson’s experience hadn’t run across yet.

As you read what other bloggers, pundits and those commenting on their sites are saying, however, you’ll notice that several other headlines and angles are possible with this story, such as:

• AP Editors Approve Story Unfit for Print
• AP Writer Pens Xenophobic Drivel
• Intel Employee’s Foibles in China Fuel Fire of ‘Inept Americans Abroad’ Mythology
• Despite Help from Chinese Good Samaritans, U.S. Business Traveler and AP Writer Greeting Him at Airport Paint Disparaging Picture of Modern China
• Intel Leaves U.S. Employees Unprepared for International Travel
• Taiyuan Brothels Exhibit Tenacious Customer Acquisition Policies

There may be something to each of these angles–for me, it’s discouraging to see such an emphasis on the perceived “negatives” of Mr. Nelson’s Taiyuan adventure (dog meat, spitting locals, cockroaches, smell of sewage), as well as what can be perceived as an American traveler’s lack of resourcefulness (slept in his clothes, spent hours wandering around seemingly lost, unable to find sustenance apart from “boiled squid” and alleged “dog meat”).

In fact, Mr. Nelson has received quite a drumming on some China-related and travel-related blog sites, such as Shanghaiist and Peter Neville-Hadley’s “Away on Business” travel blog. And while I wish the original news stories made him look a bit more resourceful, I’m going to say the following in his defense.

He’s an Intel engineer of some sort, not a “China Expert” or even a seasoned traveler, necessarily. It is likely not part of his job description to “speak Chinese” or “be able to extract oneself from a foreign, unfamiliar location and return to the U.S. on one’s own resources.”

U.S. corporations routinely send employees on brief jaunts to foreign offices without “cultural preparation” because the expectation is that (1) they’ll be met, hosted and chauferred by other employees or partners whose job it is to do so and (2) they’re being sent for meetings or technical work or training…not impromptu cultural survival.

In short, this was not Mr. Nelson’s fault. His employer and the travel company it has contracted with are responsible for his travel arrangements. Nelson and other business travelers shouldn’t have to stop and wonder whether their next scheduled flight will erroneously land them in Timbuktu. Or Taiyuan. No, that responsibility has been outsourced and paid for.

Mr. Nelson even called the travel company that created his itinerary to double-check the next leg of his itinerary and was assured that all was well: Get on the plane; it will take you to Taiwan.

It didn’t.

Which brings me back to my headline and the initial cause of this unnecessary drama.

The company that’s making money from Mr. Nelson’s employer (American Express Travel and Intel, respectively, as we glean from the AP and News Tribune stories) made the following blunders:

First, American Express Travel booked Mr. Nelson a hotel room in Taiwan, where he should have been going next, but booked his flight to Taiyuan.

As one Shanghaiist reader pointed out, however, the airport in Taiwan, “in the neighboring city of Taoyuan…sounds almost exactly like Taiyuan” to some ears.

But because too many city and place names are similar or the same, travel agents are typically trained to deal with airports and cities in terms of their three-letter codes, not their proper names. (ORD for O’Hare. PEK for Beijing. SEA for Seattle and SeaTac. And so on.)

Taiyuan’s code is TYN.

Taipei’s Chiang Kai Shek airport, in the neighboring city of Taoyuan, is TPE.

Yes, they both start with ‘T’, but….

The second American Express Travel miscue: In Hong Kong, thinking that the ‘Total Flight Time’ on his itinerary looked too long for a Hong Kong to Taiwan flight, Mr. Nelson called the travel agency and was assured (a different employee or the same one, we don’t know) that his itinerary was correct, and that after a pit-stop in Fuzhou, he’d hop right on over to Taiwan.

Those of us familiar with Chinese history, politics and contemporary affairs would know, of course, that there are no direct flights from Fuzhou to Taibei. American Express Travel apparently does not.

The third American Express Travel error, which the AP and News Tribune stories don’t address, but which I realized after just a few minutes of further research:

Instead of leaving Mr. Nelson essentially without help and helpless in Taiyuan, they could have…uh…just referred him to their American Express Travel/China International Travel Service affiliate office in Taiyuan.

Yes, unfortunately, you read that right.

And so to close:

Dear American Express Travel,

Mark Baker

This phenomenon isn’t necessarily limited to Qingyang, but the pictures that follow are, sooo….

During previous visits here to the Jinjiang area, it was already possible to get a private dining room at some of the larger restaurants, but that’s all it was: A room. With plain white walls. With a table and chairs inside. With a door. Nothing fancy. Nothing to really set you apart from the people out in the main dining area. Except that you were in a room apart from people in the main dining area. WooHoo.

But now, in Qingyang, Anhai and other cities and towns in this region, getting a private dining room has become quite the gilded experience. Fancy tables and chairs, a private bathroom, large RTV and KTV setups, in-room karaoke, fancy, comfortable seating, waitstaff that stay in the room to refill your glasses as soon as they are empty, and so on. This is in contrast to “the good old days” when they would just show up, take the order, bring the food, and then bid you a perfunctory Hasta la Vista, Baby!

Many of the fancy private dining rooms are in hotels, and in more than one case, we found ourselves in private dining rooms that used to be hotel rooms. (That would explain why one of the private dining room bathrooms we encountered still has, uh, a bathtub and shower in it. Quite convenient. “Oh dear, I’ve spilled gravy on my tie. No matter. I’ll just go shower off…”.)

Anyway, without further ado, here are some photos from one of our dining out ventures in Qingyang, which included my Wife’s entire family, kids, my Mother-in-Law’s Younger Brother and his Wife, (deep breath) my Wife’s Younger Sister’s Husband’s Parents, and, and…Oh Yeah. The Waitresses.

As you look at these pictures, remember that the “cultural lesson” here is that just five years ago, getting a private dining room at a restaurant would more likely have meant a plain room with plain walls and so on.)

(Oh, and way down below, I’m also trying out that “YouTube” video service you see popping up everywhere these days….)

Our private dining room:

A close-up of the wallpaper behind the TV:

No, my Wife isn’t slapping her Older Sister; she’s just a very “animated” talker:

A waitress refills the kids’ glasses:

My Wife modeling the hand-carved “lounge” furniture at the back of the room:

My Wife’s Younger Sister finalizes our order with the head waitress:

A video view around the table from my chair: