On our last night in Beijing, my colleagues and I went to see a Chinese acrobatics show. There were two theaters that offered it, but the one that came recommended to us by our hotel (Hilton Beijing) was called “Reverie”. We were guaranteed a great performance that had a story and good music.

One of my colleagues had never seen anything like it, so he was extremely impressed, but the first thing that struck me was how similar it was to the Cirque du Soleil performance I saw in Chicago a couple years ago, which I believe was called “Dralion”, featuring Chinese acrobats. The choreography was extremely similar. The diferences I saw were in the costumes (less sexy) and the level of perfection (they made a few mistakes). I wouldn’t be surprised if acrobats in the Cirque du Soleil production came back to China and helped produce “Reverie”.

At any rate, I wonder if I was the only one amused by the fact that the Chinese took a polished version of an art form that originated in their own country. They essentially took back something that the Cirque took from them in a manner of speaking.

If you look carefully at the bottoms of some of the toddlers in China, you notice that their pants have slits in them. Apparently, when they have to go, they just squat whereever they happen to be. I saw this on television in Japan, but I didn’t realize it was common even in Beijing. A friend, who works here, told me that it’s pretty shocking to see kids go on a marble floor even in a shopping center.

Bathrooms took some getting used to here. I’ve only been to clean office, hotel and restaurant bathrooms for the most part, but it seems like the default here is to not flush toilet paper. They have wastebaskets, where you’re supposed to put your used toilet paper.

China for the most part is surprisingly modern. Just as I was thinking how little of communism is left in the country, my colleagues and I ran smack dab into what I assume is a classic example.

A couple days ago, we took the last flight out of Shanghai into Beijing, arriving around midnight. Since our hotel, Hilton, was fully booked that evening, our company arranged to have us stay at the Capital Airport Hotel. We should’ve guessed what it would be like when we heard the price — $60.

First, we enter the hotel, and nobody speaks much English. Second, they kept asking us if we had a reservation even though we kept saying yes and gave them our names. They refused to check their books. It was almost as if they didn’t want to give us rooms, bringing to my mind a warning by a Chinese friend in Tokyo, who had told me reservations were meaningless in China because they’ll take the person who shows up first rather than wait for someone who might not show up. Fortunately, one of my colleagues saw a few papers on their desk with our names on it, so they reluctantly gave us rooms (before which they asked for the payment upfront and took a $12 deposit to make sure we gave them back the flimsy plastic keys). The entire process took about 20 minutes.

The room was something. The bathroom was my first experience with a Chinese style bathroom — the shower is essentially divided by just a shower curtain without a divider or bath, so the entire floor gets wet. Anyway, when I checked out of the hotel, they wouldn’t give me back my deposit until they checked my room to make sure I didn’t take anything. Like one of my colleagues said, “There’s no trust.” Apparently he went downstairs to get some drinking water in the middle of the night, and they told him, “No.”

Ok, I’m exaggerating a little bit here, but it’s true that our cab driver did hit the car in front of him on our way back to my company’s Shanghai office. Basically, a car two cars ahead of us decided to stop in the middle of the road all of a sudden, causing the car behind him to slam on his breaks. Our cab driver couldn’t stop or swerve in time, so he crashed right into the corner of the car in front of him. I banged my knee a little bit but was basically okay. The funny thing is the Chinese reporter, who was with us, calmly suggested we find another cab. He told us this was a fairly common occurrence.

You hear often how cab drivers in New York or Paris are crazy, but I have to say that Shanghai cab drivers are the craziest in my experience.

I’ve been in China for the last several days (Shanghai for three days and Beijing since late last night) and I have to say that my sense of money is already getting severely distorted. By that I mean cheap!
Here’s a brief run down of roughly how much I’ve paid for stuff:

Bottle of water – 10 cents.
1 hr cab ride – $10
“Expensive” fancy dinner – $14
Lunch (rice, lemon chicken, side of veggies, banana) – $1
Starbucks short latte – $2

After just 4 days here, my colleagues and I are starting to think that anything that costs over $20 is too expensive. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get back to Tokyo and its $10 “cheap” lunches.

Last week at work, a workmate and I decided to go to this tiny place to pick up some sandwiches for lunch. There was one other woman ordering so we lined up behind her in front of the sandwich display so we can choose what we want while we wait.

A few minutes later, a group of 4 or 5 women entered the store. One of them cut right in front of us. Her reasoning? Even though her friends told her we were probably in line (duh. it’s a small place), she kept muttering, “It can’t be the line. The line usually forms on the other side of the cash register. That’s funny. This isn’t usually the way the line forms… ”

To be so young and rigid! This is why so many Japanese corporations are so inefficient. Everybody’s so concerned with rules, and they can’t adapt to changes! Sheesh.

Of course my friend and I weren’t very kind either. We just stared at her, and waited to see what she would end up doing.

When my brother-in-law and his girlfriend were visiting us in Tokyo, his girlfriend and I went to a Starbucks store for some coffee. As we were picking up our coffee, I saw a sign that said: “The cardboard sleeves are for coffees of the day and caffe americanas only. Lattes and cappuccinos are made at a low enough temperature to enable you to hold the cups directly. Please help us conserve environmental resources.”

This pissed me off on so many levels. First, the sleeves are made with recycled paper. Second, we’re supposed to accept that lattes and cappuccinos are deliberately made lukewarm so they can save on sleeves? Third, we’re not paying $3 a cup of coffee for nothing. Fourth, I know this is something they made up because they don’t have this rule in the U.S.. And finally, who are they to decide what’s too hot for me to hold and what’s not?

This is just my speculation, but I’m guessing that some Starbucks Japan corporate manager or employee came up with this brilliant idea so they can cut costs, save money, drive profit and impress headquarters. That’s not a bad goal, but not at the cost of brand image. This to me is a classic example of well-intentioned Japanese employees not getting the big picture.

There’s a great book on the darker side of Japan called Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr.

In it, Kerr talks about the seeming need in Japan to treat people like children through things like signs warning you of really basic things that are nobody else’s business such as “Don’t go in the pool right after you eat,” or “Make sure you wash your eyes after you get out of the pool. ”

Along the same lines, I see a lot of signs that are sort of petty in nature. The best one I saw recently was in the bathroom at a gourmet grocery store. It said: “Don’t use toilet paper to dry your hands” along with a sign that said, “Please don’t take rolls of toilet paper.”

Really, the first sign made me speechless. I’m sure they’re trying to conserve toilet paper, but it’s not like people use up whole rolls to dry their hands. And there were no paper towels so they leave you without an option if you don’t have a hankerchief on you. Best of all, it’s a fantastic irony that a gourmet store is so miserly.

One of the subtly, clever features of many Japanese ATMs is that they make you retrieve your card and receipt before they give you your money. That way you won’t forget to get your card.

The Japanese sometimes go overboard, but whoever thought of this was pretty brilliant.

A few weeks ago, we went to Akihabara (a.k.a. Electric Town) to buy a couple lint-trap spares for the washing machine. I had called ahead to ask a salesman we knew to hold it for us. When we got there, he was with another customer, so someone else helped us.

A week or so later, the salesman we knew called me fairly frantically. He was extremely apologetic because we were supposed to be able to use points accumulated from our customer loyalty card to pay for it. He wanted to send me the difference via registered mail.

He was talking about 32 yen. The lint-traps themselves were only 500 yen apiece. Plus, he was only trying to do us a favor since parts are excluded from the loyalty program. I told him it was unnecessary, but he insisted.

Let me put this another way. He spent a couple hundred yen registering the mail and then he enclosed an envelop with an 80 yen stamp that we’re supposed to send back to let the store know we got the money. So, for 32 yen, this store has spent a few hundred yen.

This is what I call classic Japanese-style customer service.

Last week, I had dinner with three high school students for a story on mobile phone accessories. As long as I had their attention, I decided to ask about the do-it-yourself piercings since they all had pierced ears. Here’s a rundown of the conversation:

Me: So I’ve noticed that a lot of accessory stores sell ear piercing kits. Do people actually do it themselves?
Girl 1: Yup. Of course.
Girl 2: We did these (pointing to her ears) together one day after school. We helped each other.
Me: What happens to the blood?
Girl 3: There’s no blood at all.
Me: Does it hurt?
Girl 2: Nope.
Me: How do you get them to be symmetrical if you do them yourself?
Girl 1: That never occurred to us. I think we just pierced our ears without thinking about that. I think it turned out okay.

Apprarently some kids, pierce their own lips, noses or belly buttons. I also learned that if you purchase these kits and go to a doctor, they will do the piercing for you free of charge. That’s why none of the stores offer to do piercings for you.

This may actually not be as stupid a setup as I first thought. After all, the people that do piercings for $10 at malls in the U.S. arent’t exactly experts either. When I had my ears pierced, the woman screwed up on my second ear and pierced it at an angle, so I have to poke my earring in and dig around a little bit on that ear to find the back of the hole.