Archives January 2012

The other day Apple was set to release the new iPhone 4S in China. What transpired has hit news stands around the world, so I’ll only summarize briefly. A crowd of around 1-2,000 gathered in Sanlitun at the shiny Apple store the night before the new phone was set to release. In the morning, having waited through another blistering and dangerously cold Beijing night in the depths of winter, there were too many people and not enough phones. The police showed up and announced that the store would not be opening to protect the people, the employees, and the store. Some people were paid to stand in line all night, with no reward if they returned without the coveted phone. Needless to say, the crowd turned mob and pelted the store with eggs in disgust. Here’s a longer version of the story by the NY Times. Apple iPhone sales are now banned in retail outlets and will only be released online. Good move!

This isn’t the first time we’ve had an embarrassing mob problem with Apple in Beijing, and not even the first incident in the last few months. Not long ago two citizens got in a fist fight at an Apple store over the last available iPhone, a fight that resulted in one man being hospitalized and a broken window. As a result of the fight, the Apple store now has more security than the queen’s crowned jewels. These giant, well-trained men stand without blinking as they monitor the interior crowd as well as the exterior. They even have a frisking station, and the number of security cameras has doubled.

Then there was the saga of the fake Apple stores, where some of the employees working the fake stores didn’t even know they were not legit. The fakes were so good, and the shops designed to replicate real Apple stores, that customers, employees and clearly officials were all fooled. Someone wasn’t, however, and the fake stores were quickly shut down. Anyone who has spent time in China knows they will be back, but for the time being with media hype high, the fakes are temporarily on hiatus.

But that isn’t all! When the released the previous iPhone version the line was so massive that it stretched through the Sanlitun village, congesting traffic, resulting in scuffles and fights, and generally disrupting the entire area. So many people went without the phone thanks to migrant workers who were paid to stand in line to acquire the phones in bulk for sub distributors. To this day you’ll find men and women standing directly outside the Apple stores hawking the iPhones they bought on the release date, for an increased fee of course. These peddlers are not only annoying, but it’s hard to watch how desperately they tried to push the phones in the run-up to the 4S release.

What is it about Apple products that drive the Chinese crazy? Sales in China account for 1/6th of all Apple sales, but there are only five stores in the country. They are packed every day of the week with more of a curious mob spending their hard earned cash than the new rich or wealthy. Even those who can’t really afford it save up for months to have the latest gadgets.

But what we learned from the Apple staff is that nearly all the folks who buy the Apple computers and phones have no idea how to use them. The technology is so new in China that they can’t turn them on without detailed instructions. Thus, nearly half of what Apple does in China is training courses for new Apple buyers. This is a brilliant strategy and Apple is truly one of the best success stories in terms of breaking into the Chinese market with huge brand recognition.

If you follow us on Facebook, then you’ve probably noticed the bad-ass photo of Lauren on a motorcycle. Here’s how that transpired:

So it was Christmas morning, the morning after an insanely busy night of serving rowdy Chinese at the bar. We were exhausted and slept in, unlike most Christmas tales where people wake up and run to the tree. We woke up and ran to the coffee. Then Mike started fidgeting and eventually yelled “I can’t wait!”

We ran outside and there next to the grey brick wall was a shiny red motorcycle. . . well, motor-scooter. It’s an electric bike actually with a range of 30km and a max speed of 30km per hour. It’s beautiful, not unlike the motorcycle from The Great Escape. Side note: did you notice that the bike used in the film was actually invented AFTER the supposed date of the film. Major movie flaw, but still you can’t hate Steve McQueen.

So, our first day out on the bike we didn’t charge the battery fully and it died about 3km from the house. A long, embarrassing walk pushing a giant scooter. The second day out we were waiting at an intersection when a local blew through a red light and T-boned the bike, obliterating the fuselage and jolting the frame. Lauren was driving, so she yelled “Get off! I’m chasing him!” and then took off at full speed (30km per hour mind you) chasing the hit-and-run asshole. She yelled, he drove faster. Eventually she sped up enough to ram right into the side of the terrified man, knocking bits of his bike into the air and finally forcing him to a grinding halt when she pointed the nose of the busted red beauty directly in his escape path. The man then had no choice but to either face the wrath of a woman with a busted Christmas gift or to call the police. He chose the police.

They arrived leisurely and overweight, and refused to talk with us. He listed to the Chinese man and then said there was nothing he could do. We insisted the man had not only run a red light, but did a hit-and-run, and was now lying to a police officer. It looked (and sounded) pretty serious. Finally, the lazy cop sucked in his paunch and called his home-base. After a long conversation he reported that the traffic camera showed the Chinese man breaking several laws, and slamming into two foreigners who were breaking none. He sighed and told us to name a price.

This is where it got even more uncomfortable than chasing down a hit-and-run culprit Bullit style. We had to pick a price, out of the blue, and the cop was mitigating and managing the amount. He then would tell us if the price was too high. We demanded the man pay for a new bike or a new fuselage and estimated over a thousand rmb (slightly more than a $100 USD). The cop laughed, and by then a massive crowd had gathered who also laughed in support of the hyena cop. We lowered our bid, there was more laughter. Finally we said we would go with the man to a body shop and accept the estimate amount. The cop agreed, wrote out a slip and was off to serve and protect in another quarter.

We eventually ended up with 300RMB, not enough to fix the bike. Still, it was our first encounter with the legal system and with the police in China and although it wasn’t pleasant it could have been much, much worse.

It was in the depths of a dreary and cold winter in Beijing when Christmas hit, almost unexpectedly, amid family visits and mad rushes at the bar. The garland was hung, the lights were strung, and a fake fireplace had been painted on the eastern wall to give the dark living room the feeling of a home. But still, it never did feel like Christmas.

Christmas eve is a drinking night for Chinese, who remain clearly and openly confused about the contradictions of Christmas. Without a multi-episode series by the BBC it would be difficult to decypher how a baby born in Israel during a census year was related to a jolly man who dressed like a Bloods pimp from the North Pole. And how this all related to gift giving, midgets working as indentured servants, indoor evergreens and songs about sleighbells is literally anyone’s guess here. But it looks like fun, so the Chinese have adopted their own traditions:

1) The words for “Merry Christmas” sounds somewhat like the word “Apple” causing many to gift apples to one another on the 25th. In Sanlitun, in downtown Beijing there were apples ornately wrapped in beautiful cellophane boxes retailing for 50RMB ($7) a pop leaving Mike and I wondering if apple sales wouldn’t be a better industry next year than booze.

2) The Chinese have observed that foreigners enjoy drinking profusely on their profound holidays. Take, for example, St. Patrick’s Day, New Years, Australia Day, Flag Day, President’s Day, Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day and Thanksgiving. Thus, although foreigners are not out drinking on Christmas eve en masse, the Chinese have taken up the burden and march out into the bars with the grand scheme of leaving on a stretcher. This they do by ordering expensive scotch they don’t enjoy and chasing them with Blue Margaritas.

3) The Chinese have taken to decorating in somewhat a similar fashion to decorations they apparently saw in 1980s Christmas films from the deep south. Strings of lights are tossed up on trees and bushes in hideous colors and in all manner of flashing, vibrating and noise-making variations. A favorite decoration is a close up cut-out of Santa’s jolly face, only his eyes have been adapted to appear more Asian, and his mustache is pointed like Stalin’s. Still, it’s a comical, if not inspiring adaptation of the jolly man’s mug. One particularly bad copy of a Christmas tree involved a massive cone shape covered in purple, vertical lights and interwoven with neon purple ribbon. The cone was decorated in magician stars and moons. The cone was about three stories high and despite being the most unsightly cone ever erected, was a favorite spot for local “Christmas photos.” One that gets points for creativity is a rendition of a tree that was so creative it goes in the “creative” pile and not in the “epic fail” pile. It consisted of three Chinese lanterns covered in vertical lights with a star on top. Props to that one! (image below).

Christmas day can come and go in China without noticing. There were no major special events, though several large hotels held tree-lighting ceremonies full of pomp without circumstance. And these same hotels capitalized on the holidays by offering singularly outrageous meals for those unfortunate enough to be lodging solo for the holiday.

At the bar we got a special treat on Christmas. A band of merry (via drink) carolers were going from bar to bar in what they called a “caroling pub crawl.” This is a tradition I’d love to see catch on. They had guitars and great vocals, and had a few shots of courage before belting out “Oh Holy Night” and a somewhat confused version of “Oh Christmas Tree” that started off in German and migrated, once it was clear no one spoke German in their group, into English. It was a magical, Christmas moment that smelled of eggnog, and sounded like home.