Blackout Shenzhen? Felt Like it.

On August 14, 2003, I was relaxing on the Jersey shore with a friend. I had just come back from 4 week trip in China, and wanted to hang out on the beach instead of clubbing in NYC. Good choice. That day was the day of the NYC blackout. Amazing.

A power transformer had blown in a random power station somewhere in Pennsylvania. That small event led to the collapse of the entire northeast power grid. There was no power from Boston down to Washington and reaching all the way to Ohio.

Thousands of people were trapped in elevators throughout NYC. There were no subways and public transportation wasn't functioning. When I got back home, the news showed millions of New Yorkers commuting home…by foot.

Today I had a very similar experience as the New Yorkers that day…but half way around the world in Shenzhen, China.

6:05pm: I start my commute from the factory to my apartment. The commute usually lasts 25 minutes in the morning and 35 minutes at night (depending on traffic conditions). I’m hoping to get there around 6:45 for my meeting with my landlord.

6:13pm: Arrive at the 沙弯border crossing between Shenzhen suburbs and Shenzhen city limits. The bus is about to start down a 4 kilometer section of a one lane highway. This is usually the most traffic jam-prone stretch of the commute. Since the shoulder is non existent, 1 small fender-bender or one car breaking down creates a really annoying traffic jam.

6:23pm: Travel down the one lane highway is slow but consistent. There isn’t too much traffic and there are no unexpected traffic situations. I’m enjoying the ride since it gives me an opportunity to listen to the most recent Wharton Business School podcast.

6:30pm: We’ve passed the one-lane stretch of highway and have almost arrived at our next stop, 东湖宾馆 (there are no stops on the narrow highway). This 3 lane road is usually where the heavy traffic let’s up and the commute gets faster.

6:35pm: The东湖宾馆 stop is 100 feet in front of us. We’ve only moved 50 feet in the past 5 minutes. The driver refuses to let passengers off because we haven’t “officially” arrived at the stop yet. This is an understandable rule for public transportation to protect the safety of riders. No biggie.

6:38pm: We still haven’t moved. The driver finally relents and lets passengers off since there isn’t any real safety issue with just standing still. I relax in my seat and call my landlord to postpone our meeting until 7:15. I then start listening to an advanced lesson of ChinesePod.

6:38 – 6:45pm: We move 10 feet. I can see the traffic in front of me pretty well. They’re clogged up and not moving either. If people 2 km down the road are not moving, we’re not going to move in the foreseeable future. I’m getting annoyed. I organize my stuff and attempt to get off the bus. I figure that I could just take a cab home from here and still make my appointment.

6:48pm: The bus driver finally lets me off the bus after my repeated requests to open the door. After ignoring me for a bit and saying that I had missed my chance to get off the bus 50 feet ago, he gets annoyed at my complaining and lets me off.

This is the typical Chinese person of power who tries to maintain control over whoever he can. What’s the point of him keeping a passenger waiting on the bus for another 30 minutes without moving? I just don't get these people.

6:48 – 6:52pm: I walk to the closest intersection that flows away from the bottleneck. I try to get a couple of taxis but none of them would stop for me. I get even more annoyed and continue walking down the street to the next intersection.

6:58pm: I get to the next intersection, hoping to see an accident that is holding the traffic up. If I found the point of blockage, I could just walk to the nearest bus station in front of it and get on one of the 10 buses that arrive at my stop.

I don't find it. There’s just more traffic.

7:05pm: Unable to find the point of blockage, I start walking down an auxiliary street, again hoping to find a taxi to take me home. I run back and forth to and from at least 8 taxis, trying to get into one of them.

For some reason, again, none of them will take me. I keep walking.

7:10pm: I finally find a taxi and start trying to go around the traffic. Even though I missed my meeting, I still want to get home so I can relax and go to the gym.

7:12pm: After driving only one km, we are stuck in traffic again. The taxi driver crosses onto the other side of the street to try and ditch in line

All Chinese drivers love trying to get an advantage where there’s a jam by crossing the double yellow lines. The only problem is that this action rarely gives them any real advantage, but it results in the blocking of the entire traffic flow from the other direction. Just beautiful.

7:14pm: My driver turns on the traffic radio station. Interestingly enough, they’re talking about our area being really really bad. On top of that, the hosts couldn't give any reason for why the traffic was so bad today. They explained it as an anomaly where an excess amount of traffic that just converged at the same point. What they did say was to avoid this part of the city and stated how all the auxiliary roads were blocked as well since everyone was trying to find detours.

This was not just an ordinary traffic jam. This has become a systematic deterioration of the Shenzhen transportation system that has affected half of the city.

7:17pm: I cut my losses and get out of the taxi. I start walking again.

7:20pm: I arrive at the next major intersection. Traffic is completely clogged. It looks like what happens in the movies where the lights of an intersection suddenly all turn green. Bad news.

7:30pm: After looking around for a bit, I find another cab to take me down, what I think is an ok street.

7:33pm: I’m stuck again in traffic. This time I only went 0.7km. I guess I’ll never learn.

7:35pm: I get out of the taxi (again) and start walking (again). Screw it; I’m walking all the way home.

8:12pm: I finally get home. J

Quite a journey. I spent a total of 30 yuan and 2 hours and 7 minutes on a commute that should be 3 yuan and 35 minutes.

When I was walking home, I had a interesting time thinking about some of the issues going on:

• Damn you Random Chinese Roadside Construction! You were definitely an accomplice today.
  
• I wish I had a bike or motorcycle. Shenzhen has outlawed motorcycles and has discouraged bike use (by building a city without bike lanes). Even so, everyone with a bike got to where they wanted to go today.
  
• Chinese people are impatient in traffic. When I was walking home, I came across a bunch of bus stops. The people there were waiting patiently for buses that were never going to come.
  
• This is only going to get worse. As China continues to modernize and grow its middle class, more and more people will start buying cars. The abundant amount of new (and sucky) drivers on the same amount of urban roads is going to kill traffic.
  
• Although the situation today in Shenzhen wasn't as involved, it still shared many similarities as the NYC Blackout of 2003. It felt like chaos.
  
• Modern technology is of utmost importance in today’s culture. People are more dependent on technology than ever before. I don't know how I would live if I didn't have my cell phone for a week not to mention a city-wide or nation-wide blackout.
  
• I wonder if there would be real life examples of the world in Independence Day, Deep Impact or A Day After Tomorrow. Actually, there have already been many isolated examples of this. Look at hurricane Katrina’s effect on the New Orleans area, the carnage of the Asian Tsunami or the river poisoning of 松花江 last year that left Harbin, China (where I was born) waterless for more than a week. Human and nature-created disasters are here.

I had a bunch of friends who experienced the NYC Blackout. They said it wasn't too bad. I don't know…I just hope my elevator works when I wake up tomorrow for another commute.

I Want Delivery!

I really like my Shenzhen apartment. It is nice, clean and just the right size for me. It has all of the appliances and furniture that I need and even a nice sized gym on the 5^th floor (I live on the 27^th). It is a 10 min walk to the pedestrian-only shopping area (老街) and the bus to work stops immediately outside the building. Oh yea, I almost forgot… check out the view.

My only complaint about my apartment is the lack of restaurants downstairs. There are a couple of mom & pop noodle places but that’s about it. To get any selection of restaurants, I need to walk at least 5-7 minutes away. Most of the time, a 5 min walk in China isn’t a big deal. However, when I’m hung over and don't want to get out of bed (like most Sundays), I just want something, anything.

Solution: Delivery.

Before living here in China, I had thought that delivery did not exist here. I have a lot of family who live in Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai. I have never seen any of them order delivery and/or even have delivery menus. I was pleasantly surprised that it at least exists in Shenzhen. Because labor is so cheap here, many restaurants have a couple of people specifically for delivery purposes in the neighborhood. Although I don't imagine it to be Justin-Timberlake-popular, like it is around the Columbia University campus (oh how I miss eating Chinese Wai Lee) it is still most definitely needed.

Every couple of days when I’m walking in and out of my building, I see delivery people bringing food in. As a relatively new resident, without any knowledge of which restaurants deliver, I make an effort to talk to these delivery people and get a menu from them. What’s interesting is that after talking to delivery people on more than 40 different occasions, I have only obtained 1 menu.

Only 1. That’s it.

What are these people doing not carrying menus around when they’re fulfilling an order? I don't understand it. In a selfish sense, I want the added convenience to get some food without getting out of the apartment. But from a business perspective, how can these restaurants not require these people to carry tons of menus on them. This would not only be a good way to market their restaurant, but it would give the non-cooking population somewhere to order from.

Above all, how has any restaurant owners recognized that no one else is doing it and they can almost corner neighborhood market for delivery? My neighborhood has 4 buildings, 26 residential floors in each building and 12 apartments on each floor. Assuming that there are 2 people living in each apartment (a low estimate) the total number of people is 2500 in this building complex alone. Combine the 5 other complexes around me together, and it’s a sizable customer base for a small restaurant.

As a veteran of Columbia University fast food, I can only describe the competition for take-out as a war.

Here are the details:

• Basically all of the restaurants post on online menu websites like dogears.net, menupages.com, so that people can have quick access to their menus.
• Some places even list on services like Campusfood.com where the order can be made directly online, quickly and easily.
• Restaurants advertise on billboards, newspapers, ect.
• Every order has at least 1 menu in the delivery package.
• Some restaurants even use their menu as an invoice/bill for the customer with the ordered items highlighted.
• All delivery people have menus with them at all times. They place these everywhere, especially at the outside door to an apartment building.
• Rivalries and aggressive tactics were used by the 3 local Chinese delivery places. Every time one place made a delivery to a dorm building, they would take all of the other 2 restaurants’ menus and replace them with their own. Talk about cutthroat.

All of these practices in Columbia University and NYC in general are geared to maximize the exposure of the restaurant in a competitive landscape as well as make it convenient for the consumer to order delivery. This is life in a mature marketing environment.

Now if only any Chinese companies can take a hint and figure stuff out, I might be able to order from them instead of going to McDonald’s.

NYC Taxi Cops

This Saturday night, I was in New York City, in a car on the east village. I only have a couple of friends with cars in the city and the reasons are very clear why that is. The traffic is decently slow, the streets are small and the parking is non-existent (it definitely feels like Shenzhen). We were trying to go to a friend’s place, but we couldn't find a place to park. Instead of just parking anywhere and not worry about the non-existent tickets that would result, if I were in Shenzhen, we drove up and down street after street, only to find fire hydrants open.

After 10 minutes of looking, we were disgruntled but not defeated. We decided to go a little bit further away to try our luck. While stopped at a right light, attempting to turn right (there’s no turn on red in all of NYC), a yellow cab suddenly came out of nowhere and ran the red light. While it passed the intersection, however, it turned on what seemed like custom-made lights inside that flashed red and blue. My friend and I both thought that it was a taxi that was pretending to be a police officer so that it could get away with violating traffic laws (a very smart idea if it was). Instead, it was just the opposite, it was a police officer, undercover, pretending to be a taxi cab.

The third person in our car explained to us that there have been a growing number of these “undercover” police cabs in the city. They are there not to protect against terrorists or anything of that sort. They are there to catch possible traffic law offenders while blending into the background. They have the ability to issue tickets for parking, speeding, running lights, ect.

This is amazing. Let’s analyze:

• It is the perfect way to see what is actually going on by blending into the background. People act differently when there are people of authority around. This reminds me of my perspective and situation in Shenzhen (and the title of this blog). Haha.
• How did this not happen earlier? Air Marshals are on airplanes. Undercover police are on subways pretending to be beggars. It’s about time the police disguised themselves on the street.
• I’ve described this experience with a bunch of different people. In my limited sampling, it seems that NO ONE knows this is actually happening. I guess it’s a new thing.
• Talk about irony. When people refer to China, they always talk about how it is an authoritarian police state. However, if your actually in China, you never see police anywhere. Compare that now to the United States. This beacon of freedom and democracy has police hiding in taxi cabs. Wow.
• China should learn from this. There should definitely be more police on the street in China. Maybe then, the amount of traffic violations and traffic jams caused would decrease.

While talking to my friends who live in NYC, there is a consistent feeling of more and more of their rights slowly disappearing. Is this in the name of safety and terrorism? I don't know. I do know that it feels pretty free in China and taxis run red lights at night without other taxis chasing it down.