Due Diligence: No, I will not eat the dog.

Alright blueeyez, I have started to feel significantly guilty about the fact that neither bozo nor I has contributed anything to our blog ... and being that in the past 2 weeks alone I have tried more "new" things than I even wanted to, its only fair that I share some of them.

So to start off, I'll give a little bit of background. I moved to China in March of this year to take a job as an analyst at a small American merchant bank headquartered out here in Shanghai. Living in China, even in a modern city like Shanghai, builds character. Not everyone is cut out for life here - the morning battle to get on the subway, dodging loogies on your way to work, praying for your life each time you get into a taxi ... not all people can get used to that.

As the newest member of my company (and the one with the best English writing skills – questionable, I know) I have been assigned a long list of relatively tedious tasks since I've been here, primarily researching and writing lengthy reports on various companies, industries, etc. About 2 weeks ago, however, one of my coworkers came up to my desk and told me that he had decided to put me on the team for a deal he was working on involving a company in Yunnan Province (south western China). For those who don't know, Yunnan is known for being China's natural wonderland, with blue skies, lakes filled with lotus flowers, and green rolling hills as far as the eye can see - not things you come across very often on China's polluted urban coast. As part of the deal team, I was invited to accompany two of my local coworkers on a due diligence trip, during which we spent 3 days in Yunnan, all of which I expected would be filled with endless meetings, in Chinese, about the company's finances, production, expansion plans etc ...

Yea, I was wrong.

We spent maybe 2 hours Monday morning in a meeting (during which I learned just how bad my business Chinese really is), had a brief tour of the factory, and then the rest of the trip was all play, with a LOT of food and a LOT of booze. Lets start with the food. Now, the only two things I refused to eat were the dried crunchy bees served with the nut tray as a starter, and the boiled dog meat that made up some kind of soup. I did, however, eat a nice assortment of organs, including intestine and something that definitely resembled a brain (though I might be making that up), crickets, dried and fried anchovies on a stick, and my favorite, 麂子 (ji zi, pictured below), or in English, the "Barking Deer." It took me ages to figure out what the English name for 麂子 was, but it turns out it is a rather adorable small deer like creature that is most frequently found in India, though I guess it wanders China quite a bit too. After eating it, I was informed by the company that it is an endangered species, but after doing some research I have figured out that its not quite endangered yet, its just illegal to hunt it ... so that made me feel a little better. The booze is a rather quick story – don’t drink rice wine in China! Its disgusting, and being that I am a western woman, all men in Yunnan think I can drink like a fish, and continuously “干杯” (“Dry cup!” Aka “Cheers, now chug!”) with me in attempts to get me trashed. They succeeded, multiple times. Thankfully I avoided the baijiu … baijiu is a whole other beast that I will talk about another time.

The play … a full on water battle!!! The company took us to a place called Pu Zhe Hei, which I guess is a hot tourist destination in southern Yunnan, though I had never heard of it. Basically, it is an area populated by the Dong Yi people, one of China’s 56 minorities, and it features a gorgeous lake filled with lotus flowers. We get there, and after a lengthy photo shoot, immediately head to a row of random shops to buy new outfits for our boat ride. They keep telling me I am gonna be getting wet, but I guess I just didn’t really get what they meant … until they handed me a super soaker and a bucket. So I bought a new outfit (hilarious mens cropped, camo, cargo pants and an old lady-style embroidered shirt), grabbed my weapons, and got into the canoe. I don’t even know how to describe the next 3 hours … it was ridiculous. Me, 2 coworkers, and 4 men from a Chinese company in Yunnan, on 2 canoes, with beer, meat on a stick, water guns, and buckets, full out attacking any boat we encounter in an all out lake water war. As the only white person on the whole lake, I was the favorite target of all oncoming boats, but aside from my farmers tan and the several diseases I probably contracted from the water, I came out rather unscathed.

So brief recap, new things Qiezi tried in China:

Due diligence

Yunnan

The almost-endangered barking deer

Organs

Fish on a stick

Rice wine

Chinese water battle

Up next … my Shanghai apartment search. Sounds boring, huh. Think again.