Crossing the street, diminishing marginal utility, and always happy

I think Jackie has described what it takes to cross the street in China. It is an interesting mix of courage, trust and what some might call temporary insanity…

Let me say right now that the problem is not that they drive on the other side of the street – only in Hong Kong do you have that complication. No, the problem is much more difficult to reconcile since you need to look both left and right simultaneously. (It’s not as simple as which direction to look first!) Of course, you can look left and right at the same time, and to attempt to do so would cause you to move your head back and forth so fast that you might get dizzy and fall down. This would be unfortunate, because the drivers here tend to just go over whatever is in the road instead of avoiding it. (This happened to me and the driver had to stop and remove the cardboard we were dragging down the road…)

Anyway, what happens is you must get a head start. See right on red is legal, which means they really don’t stop. Also interesting is the fact that nearly every traffic signal counts down – sort of like at the drag strip.

So, you know when it is coming, and so does everyone else in the intersection or near the intersection.

Your best hope is to start with about 2 seconds left on the cross traffic – and RUN!!! But, don’t run too far as you need to stop on the center stripe and check carefully for the person barreling down the road you are crossing to make his right hand turn on red.

If you’re thinking that you’ve got this game of frogger licked at this point – watch out! Remember there is another street that isn’t really a street for bicycles and mopeds. The problem with this little street is that they don’t obey any traffic law. Red, pink, yellow or green, these folks do what they want when they want.

Now for my travels today. I had the pleasure of taking a dongche. This is a new word in Chinese and is essentially the China version of the bullet train – and man is it nice. Zipping along a 200 kph sitting in a wide seat, working on my computer, checking emails on my phone, man did I feel modern!

Of note on this trip (say 150 kilometers – almost 100 miles) was the fact that we never left the city. Yes, we cross jurisdictional lines, but we never left industrialization. I went to a “small” town of 400,000 people. It was nice and I had a good business meeting.

On the ride to and from, I had some time to think about longer term issues and do some gut checking on our current direction – that was nice.

As for literal direction, tomorrow we are headed to Shenzhen. I’ve got some business to do there and then we are off to Hong Kong. I am happy that Danny (who can recognize the city in pictures on my computer), Jackie and Josh will be able to see the city. It is a very different place – incredibly crowded, sort of Western mashed with a real Asian feel.

We are going to Hong Kong so that I can complete some paperwork formalities and have a supplier meeting or two. Since I have conflicting info on what color the background of my photo has to be, I needed a stapler as I'll have to do the final assembly in the consulate. Since we didn’t have one, I made the 20 minute walk or so to the little store where I found the plunger. Getting this item was no problem (4 attendants later). On the way home I had to pass a Cold Stone Creamery. I called Jackie and went in to indulge ourselves with some take home ice cream.

For those who have never been to one of these joints, let me say they are proud of their work. I plunked down what is probably 25% of weekly pay for the average Chinese office worker in a city like Shanghai or Shenzhen for four pints of ice cream… and this brings me to the whole utility thing.

In economics, it is assumed that rational people try to maximize their utility. You do this in a number of ways, but spending money to get other things is one way you try to do this for yourself. Now there is a problem. This problem is that economics also says that there is decreasing marginal utility. Put simply, for ice cream, the next bite doesn’t quite taste as good as the one before, and so on. That is, you aren’t quite as happy with it once you’ve had it for a while.

Well, let me tell you, after spending way too much on ice cream, its utility is holding up rather well! The last two days have been insane, so I didn’t get a chance to eat well or at home at all on Monday. Today I had the choice between McDonalds or some dumpling restaurant at the train station before my ride home. I asked about the dumpling place and I got the typical haikeyi response.

Let me talk about what hai ke yi means. It’s official translation is something like not bad or passable. In English, of course we have many levels of OKness. From Excellent to good to mediocre to not so good, to bad, to terrible, to awful and so on. In Chinese, unfortunately, I have only heard very good (hen hao), good (hao), OK (hai ke yi), and not good (bu hao).

Clearly if I ask about a place and bu hao comes out, we move on in a hurry. Hai ke yi is a bit more difficult as it ranges somewhere from not so good to not bad centered on mediocre.

So we went to the dumpling place. Keep in mind we fed two people (and had leftovers) for about 8 USD. At this point I should also tell you that I have found that lemon lime Gatorade does wonders for calming your stomach. After eating/acting very full at lunch, I promptly bought a Gatorade for me and a Pepsi for my coworker. This cost 20% of the food bill.

Now back to ice cream. Most Chinese don’t like cream based foods. That is why it is interesting to see so many Dairy Queens. A weird marketing gimmick at DQ is the fact that they serve blizzards “upside down” or you don’t pay. What they do is literally turn the blizzard upside down before they hand it to you. Every time they do this the Chinese people with me ask why – I say “must be a Chinese thing, they don’t do this in the US!”

Anyway, I have lost several pounds over the last week. A lot of walking and less and less food – good for me and for the time being, good for Cold Stone Creamery!

This brings me to my conclusion for the day, which is based on difficult translations. Essentially anytime something is hard to translate, they will give you some variation on “makes you happy”. I walked all the way home and in the elevator noticed the English on the ice cream bag – “Always Happy”. And so, as I savored every bite with constant enjoyment, I had to agree!