Christmas Day

Stewart and I had been talking about the big Christmas Party that was scheduled via our Facebook group page.  We both agreed that Christmas eve was what mattered, and it should be at home with intimates.

The venue for the big party is the Fudu Hotel, an elegant international hotel, with its Shangri-la restaurant..  That is where Rolf is the head chef.  He's the one I finally got to meet and talk with at the Hutang Shangri-la Christmas lighting ceremony, and old German gentleman.  It is to be a six hour event, with games and food.  It cost 288 rmb, and BYOB.  They waived the corking fee.  In US dollars that's about $47.  Maybe it doesn't sound much to you, but by Chinese standards it's a lot.

The other problem with the big party is that the Fudu is in Xin Bei.  That's the far away northern part of Changzhou, turning a six hour event into 8 hours.

My good friend Ann Marie organized the event.  Last week I saw her at a book club meeting in Nan Da Jie. That is the city center, between Xin Bei and Hutang.  We were riding the escalator up to the public toilet, and I said to her, "it saddens my heart to go to a shindig in Xin Bei and meet all these neat people and then not see them again.  I need local friends."  Case in point, I haven't seen Ann Marie in at least two months.

I hope I wrote about the Christmas Lights ceremony at the new Shangri-la hotel Dec. 6, because that was IT for my public Christmas celebrations.

So I decided to have Chrstmas eve at my place.  I told Stephanie about it, and her circle of friends.  That's Danielle who now lives in my old apartment at Mechatronix school; Aoife who is Irish and an adventurer; she travels each week on her two days off to a different city locally.  And josh.  Josh works for Web Kids, a new school down the block with a special kids program.  He is in his twenties, tall, and outgoing.  He was in my shop with Danielle, to whom I gave a kitty, Ami.

Ami is a street cat who hung out in the courtyard at my apartment.  She was tame, not like the other wild cats.  yet no one wanted to take her into their home, so she scrounged for food. She is a gray tabby, about two months older than my kittens.  Often the good folk would put food out for her, their table scraps.  I took her to Dr. White, my vet, and had here spayed.  One day Danielle was saying how she loves cats.  I told her about my loaner cats, and she jumped at it.  She now has Ami, and they are very happy together.

Josh said he loved cats, and would like one too.  So I bought a cage on Taobao, and set the trap early one morning.  A couple hours later I went to work, with the cage filled with a young calico.  She stayed at the bakery until afternoon, when Josh came for her.  It was hilarious trying to get her out of the cage and into a sack so he could carry her home.  He really should have just taken the cage.  We caught her once, but he let her out of the sack accidentally.  She ran all around, leaping up at the windows in the kitchen, throwing everything above the sink to the floor.  I finally caught her, getting some teeth marks on my hand along the way.

So the four of them planned to come over.  I told them I wasn't up to cooking, but I could supply the wine.  We set a price for gift exchange.

They came over late.  Stew never did come, because Jenny and A.J. had invited him to their place.  Jenny's baby is over due.  Aoife (like eva, with an f) turned out to be the cook in the lot.  She brought about five dishes.  Danielle came early, and cooked a pot of brown rice in my steamer.  She served it with a dressing of Pesto from the bottle, a small amount of raisins and halved cherry tomatoes.  It is amazing!

So we ate, we chatted, we did the gift exchange, and then what.  A movie was playing on my TV during dinner, but clearly we didn't want to waste the evening glued to the TV screen.  So I suggested Mexican Train.  Stephanie had played it before, and was eager.

We played a long time.  Finally, at 2 a.m., Stephanie and Danielle left.  Josh and Aoife weren't ready yet.  During the evening there was this exchange between them, after about two bottles of wine, a beer, and just before I cracked open the bottle of scotch.

In a voice of mild curiosity Josh said to Aoife, "I like you."  She returned, in a puzzled voice, "I like you too"  He said, "I really like you, I don't want to but..."

It was sweet.  What I didn't know was that Josh had bought a plane ticket, wiping out his savings, for his girlfriend to come visit him.  She was due in a few days.

The two of them stayed on until 4 a.m.  They spoke about the folks who had just left, and analyzed them as if putting together bits of data to make sense out of phenomena.

I can't remember what else we talked about, as even I had a wee drab of the scotch.  They insisted on cleaning up before they left, hauling things to the kitchen and doing some dish washing.  I was very grateful in the morning, not having to face a mess in the living room.

They wandered out into the dead of the night.  The city is almost quiet then.  I wonder how long it took them to catch a cab.  They don't live in the same neighborhood, and neither of them speak Chinese.  But they were two good friends together, and it must have been a perfect ending to Christmas eve, for them.

I slept in the next day, til 7:30.  It was lovely.  Ricky texted me and arranged to come down from Nan Da Jie for lunch.  I took a shower, shampooed what was left of my hair after a trip the hairdresser last week, and finished the toilet with a dab of perfume, and mascara.  I got dressed in non-working clothes, pulling out my Earth Spirit ankle boots that I had bought in Vermont in 2008.  They were dusty; I took the time to find the boot paste and polish them.

We agreed to meet at the bakery at noon.  As it turned out, both of us were running late.  I grab a taxi (waiting probably ten minutes for it!) and pulled up to the bus stop as the B11 was approaching.  We exited out vehicles seconds apart.

We wandered over to the Maoye mall, where the Jackie Chen movie theatre is.  We had heard that there is a new restaurant just opened, on the fifth/top floor of the mall.  Michael Dent is a Canadian, apparently.  I don't know if I've ever met him.  We found the restaurant, but it wouldn't open until 6:30.  We wandered around the empty mall, Ricky stopping frequently to take pictures.  She was fascinated with geometric patterns, and appreciated the mall architecture.  I led her to the Jackie Chen movie.  We went into the lobby, but there was no western movie playing.  On the door there are big polka dots in dark to fading colors.  She laughed to see polka dots on a door.  She stood inside photographing them, and as if on cue a couple walked past.  it is actually a great shot of two people framed in large dark circles which fade to a cloud at their feet.

We continued our way down to the ground floor, walking down unmoving escalators.  I wanted to show her the Sunshine coffee place, but when we got there it was locked.  We peeked through the windows at the lovely cozy decor.  Then I noticed on the glass that they open at 1 p.m.  I looked at my watch and saw it was 12:50.  We were too cold and restless to wait.  I was hungry for real food.

Just then Stephanie texted me and asked me when I was coming.  Then I remembered that Lasalles had invited me (through Stephanie) to come for Christmas dinner.  We walked from the mall to his house, though I wanted to take the bus.  I am getting so lazy!  It was probably less than a kilometer.

We entered the apartment to find two young tall Chinese guys, and Stephanie.  Lasalles was moving swiftly from room to room.  He was in the kitchen, then greeting his new guests, then to the bedroom or toilet, then back to the kitchen while his Chinese friends played the role of hosts.  They took our coats, and invited us to sit.  Lasalles called me into the kitchen and handed me a package of paper cups and a couple of plastic mugs.  He said, I have lots of tea, here are the cups.  So I carried them ten steps to the table in the living room, and made a cup of pomelo tea for me and Ricky.

We were seated, chatting with Stephanie and the Chinese young men.  One of them was a college student, the other was a violin teacher at the college.  The student had a very expensive digital camera, that we played with intermittently through the afternoon.

Stephanie had already cut up a bunch of vegetables.  They were sliced fine, ready to be sauteed.  Green and red sweet peppers, onions and celantro leaves.  Another pot held sliced mushrooms.  A third dish had chunks of celery.  None of it looked like hors d'oevres.  The small coffee table was cluttered with these things, and with three cutting boards.

Lasalles came in and regalled us with all the wonderful things we were going to eat. He loves the spotlight, and so these presentations or previews of things to come were spoken in parsed melodic phrases.  He punctuated each phrase with a drawn pause ending in a rising tone.  The gist of it, unravelled over about a half hour of these speeches interrupted with his wandering between the kitchen and us, was that he had two kinds of potatoes, and chicken in various forms.  Chicken wings, and chicken for making curry, are two he mentioned.  At one point he talked to the two Chinese guys, and they disappeared out the door.  They came back after almost an hour, with a coconut.  They hovered around a machine on the dining table which was against the wall.  He let the guys do the work while he was telling us again that he had all kinds of tea, oh and there was lots of wine on the end table in the corner.  The guys turned to him holding a plastic pitcher with a couple ounces of coconut juice.  Then Lasalles turned his attention to that project, giving further instructions.  This was the coconut milk that was to be used in the dishes.

He asked if anyone wanted to help cutting up stuff.  I was off kitchen duty, so i kept silent, much to Lasalles' dismay.  Stephanie shrugged her shoulders and said she didn't know how to cook.  Ricky piped up and said sure, I'll help, what do you need.

She attacked a head of garlic with gusto. She layed it out on the cutting board and smashed it with her palm. Then she slipped off the loosened skins.  By and by the cutting board had about twenty cloves of shiny garlic bordering its edge.

It was now 2:00.  We were all starved, having expected to come for lunch. Each time he would make an appearance, we all asked if any of that great stuff was actually ready for eating.

He brought out a pot of boiled potaotes and asked  Ricky to slice them.  He became elaborate again, describing what he was going to do with these potatoes.  He turned his attention to the Chinese guys.  The three of them stood at the table, as our host assigned them another task.  Ricky looked at Steph and me, and we speculated about how to cut the potatoes.  Quartered?  Thick slices, thin slices?  Finally Ricky dove into the task and had them nicely sliced.  Lasalles took them into the kitchen.  About a half hour later, I went once again into the kitchen, and helped him unload the potatoes from the pans into a bowl.  They had been dipped into a mixture of onion powder and black pepper on a cutting board near Ricky, and he must have then dipped them in egg before sauteing them.

I set them on the coffee table, and we pack of hungry wolves made them disappear quickly.

The whole apartment was quite small, maybe 60 square meters.  The kitchen was too small and cluttered to allow two people to work in there.  I suspect Lasalles had hoped that I would be the one doing the heavy lifting, and he would just be giving instructions.  But it was my day off.  I did go in to see if I could do something, but it wasn't possible.  Lasalles, a light skinned Canadian who would have fit in like a native in New Orleans, was a man of large gestures and exaggerated speech.  He filled that tiny kitchen to overflowing.

I dug into the bottles hiding behind a lamp and a green plant on the end table in the corner.  There was nothing recongizable on the labels of the five bottles.  I found one white wine. I asked for a cork screw, which Lasalles was able to find, but then discovered that it was a screw top.  The label said it was a white savignon and chardonnay.  It tasted more like vinegar.  By the look of the labels on the other wines, I suspect they were all of equal quality.

At one point while Lasalles was visiting with us in the living room, I asked him why he didn't buy my bread.  He said I didn't have the kind of bread he liked.  What was that, I asked?  Whole grain stuff, healthy stuff.  Like what?  Anything, he said, with whole wheat, maybe rye.  He said when he comes into the shop the counter person says we don't have any of the things he asks for.  I told him we had a freezer full of fresh baked breads.  All he has to do is ask.  Obviously, it must have been a long time ago that he came in, before we got into this rhythm of keeping the shelves and freezer full.

He tried once, it didn't satisfy, and he never came back.

The two guys got up and started to leave.  We asked them where they were going.  They said that the Christmas environment was lacking, they were going to find some Christmas hats.

Moments later, one of my former Web students walked in the door for a visit.  She stayed a while, and left.  Meanwhile, she pulled from her bag a loaf of my New York Deli Rye and grinned at me.  'Lasalles!' I called, 'look at this.' He was coming out of the bathroom.  He wouldn't look at me.

The other lady, as Chinese always move in pairs, was Zoe.  She is one of my favorite Web students, I was happy to see her again.  I had recently bumped into her at Shirley's new spa.  She is witty, she speaks her mind, often in zingers.

The ladies were expecting to see the two Chinese guys, and were disappointed not to find them.  They stayed for a while, hoping to see them.

Lasalles sat with us, the conversation was lively.  Then Stephanie said, is there going to be any food soon?  We're starved.'

After a while he returned to the kitchen.

The pile of cut vegetables was beginning to dwindle. The Chinese don't' like raw stuff, nor cold.  They watched us nibbling on slices of red sweet pepper and yellow, on celery.  Eventually one of them picked up a celery and tried it.  The other marveled.  the first picked up another, and they had a conversation about it.  Yes, he said, it is good.  it's okay to eat it like this.  They groped for a word....pet...pest...pesticides!

We all assured them that the vegetables had been washed.  A colander of raw spinach had materialized on the coffee table.  Ricky wondered if the roots should be cut off.  They had obviously been washed.  We agreed the roots needed to come off.  She did that.  The guys pointed to it, and said it needed to be washed.  It was washed!  we chorused.  But it needs to be washed again!  The pesticides   So he took them out into the kitchen and washed them again.

And so the talk of food continued.  Finally it was 5:00.  Ricky had a dinner date in Nan Da Jie.  We all agreed she should give travel plenty of time, as it was rush hour and the bus ride would take longer.

We said our farewells, and left.

Down in the street, we agreed it was a fun day.  She was glad that we only grazed, as at least she didn't over eat.  The potatoes had filled me up, too.  We never got to taste his exotic dishes, his two kinds of fried rice and three kinds of chicken, but we were satisfied.

Christmas time

It is hard to get the Christmas spirit here.  No manger scenes, just commercialism to get people to shop.  All the malls have 'christmas trees', a very tall metal frame with lights strung vertically.

I'm placing a reminder here for myself, to add the photo of my storefront.  Here it is christmas eve, and only a week ago I finally got around to painting my storefront Christmasy.

Peter becomes a better and better baker.  Definitely still an apprentice, though.  He did cookies alone yesterday.  I wandered into the kitchen as he was pulling them out of the oven.  Time is up, he said, so they're done.  For the thousandth time I reminded him, time is only one indicator.  You need to touch, see, sometimes even feel.  We tapped the top of the Tollhouse cookies and they dented.  Nope, not ready yet.

But he's much better with the breads now.  It's a great relief to me, I can really count on him to work independently in some areas.

We're having just a dreadful time with breads sticking to the pans.  I had to throw out a whole batch of six loaves, because they all stuck so bad.  I was sad, because two of those loaves were the NY Deli Rye, and I expected them to be the best ever.  I have tried everything I know, but cannot fix this problem.  Now we are lining the pans with parchment paper, but that is an expensive solution.

I am having trouble with Tina.  She is a sweetheart, and I suspect there's intelligence there.  She is easily distracted.  Could it be ADD?  Poor girl, she has a knack of screwing up everything she touches.  Bottom line, I cannot count on her to be my manager, as I had hoped.  She is the proto type of the student we teachers all talk about.  Incapable of thinking independently, creatively.  No problem solving skills, no curiosity.

I don't trust her anymore, because she is being very shifty about why she's taking days off.

We have a new part-time mother of 5 year old twins, Linda (Chinese, of course)

Went to a private luncheon where the speaker was a pre eminent traditional chinese medicine doctor, working at the local TCM hospital.  Only two guests showed up!  After the lecture, he gave us a private pulse reading.  My appetite has come back to normal since i've been taking his meds.  Kidney system out of balance.

Cats.  Bought a trap, am catching strays and giving them away.  Taking responsibility for neutering them, but now my vet has given me coupons for a few neuterings.

Xiaolan took three days off in a row (she has two days off anyway, but she shifted the days) to attend her brother's wedding.  It's local, but he wanted her by his side as he made preps.  Sweet.  Hence Saturday was just Peter and me.  Business has been way off this week, so our shelves and freezer are full.  Nothing for Peter to do.  We tried some new stuff, he's so eager to learn.  Then I sent him on an errand I've been dreading, since it's a long bus ride.  He bought more cooling racks.  We need them in the oven to lift things off the stone that need air under them.  Can't find them on Taobao, or any of the closer restaurant supply stores.  He got the job done.  Today I'll send him to Metro to buy cheese.

More later.  I'm late for work!  The boss will kill me.  Oh wait, I am the boss.  :-)

into December

In a way it is dreadful that my whole life revolves around the bakery, in that I am missing out on knowing some really nice people.  The bakery is dynamic right now, growing changing evolving.  I would imagine that it would eventually settle down and just BE.  But right now it is busy Becoming.

I'm pleased that we've managed to produce a righteous pita bread.  What inspired it was the request for more vegetarian sandwiches. A couple of ladies came in one day and ordered coffee.  One had great English skills.  We chatted.  Eventually it emerged that her friend would like to work at the bakery.  The friend is mother of 5-year old twin boys, and doesn't have a lot of free time.  

I arranged to hire her for two hours a day, five days.  I assigned her pita bread production.  Her first few days entailed she and I learning how to make pita!  Now she's on her own.  I was able to find atta on Taobao, which made all the difference in the taste.

Her name is Linda.  She is a responsible adult.  You say duh!  But Tina has proven to be such a child that I've reached the point where if she left I wouldn't mind.  She temperamental, irresponsible and can be quite whiney.  I really can't count on her for anything in the kitchen.  She's handling the accounts, billing the sandwich clients and costing the products, independently.  I need to find time to check out her work, but it would take more time and energy than I have.  I do appreciate that these things get done without me.  I can only hope they are being done well.

Agco now orders sandwiches from us.  Just one production group.  The workers pay for the sandwiches themselves, for sandwiches twice a week.  Maybe other groups will catch on and also order.  They have a bus picks them up on the corner near my shop, so I carry the sandwiches out there and give them to just anyone waiting for that private bus.  One of my former Web students is among them!  What fun. 

My baker, Peter, is getting better and better.  He has great time management skills, so he can crank out a lot of edibles in 8 hours.  I've just had to watch him closely because he's impatient and fond of cutting corners.  But he's getting better.  I rely on him a lot.

I miss hanging out with friends.  Yet I'm not much fun to be around, since I seldom sit still.  I try to pull myself away after 8 hours, and I succeeded yesterday!  But more often each day turns into twelve hours.  There's always something going on.

Briefest December update

What fun!  I've added pita bread to my lineup.  Now doing coffee service, on demand.  Made some great little apple tarts, which the Americans are calling 'pop tarts' when they see them at first.  A new part time employee seems promising.  A second company is ordering weekly sandwich delivery.  I'm getting heel spurs, so I'm trying to cut back time on my feet.  Teaching more, doing less.

Blustery November

It has been an interesting month so far.  Time hurtles by as I look over my shoulder at yesterday and find last week.

I misplaced my ATM card for the bank where I had my internet account set up.  I shop online with that account.  They froze my account for a waiting period.  Meanwhile, I desperately needed to order some goods online for the shop.

So I went to my other bank, the bank account that is swollen with all this money I had to bring over here.  They gave me a little thumb drive, and then sent the password by mail to the store.  When I finally got a free moment, I tried to install it and use it.  The password didn't work!  I was upset.  OK, I had already resolved the pending payment for the shipment of flour by contacting the farmer and getting his bank account number so that I could do a direct deposit to it.  But there were other supplies running low.

I went to the bank and asked them what was wrong, why didn't it work.  They were very patient with me.  They took me to the computer and tried to make it work.  In the end, they said that password was only valid for five days, so it has expired.  What?!?  But I received it only a few days ago.  I tried arguing with them, but they had the advantage of the computer record on their side.  It had been in my possession for two weeks.

Once we got that sorted out, I searched online for packaging for our new sandwich catering business.  Tina found just the thing.  We tried a hundred the first week.  Then we ordered two hundred.  Our third order was much larger.

There are other packaging issues still pending, however.  These challenges never stop coming at me.

Jolly's

I finally went up to Xin Bei to get my basket back from Johnny at Jolly's Restaurant.  It was in a back room, not that many business cards had been picked up.  As it turns out, his business has been slow continuing right into the fall season.  He wasn't there.  I left him two loaves of multigrain.  I haven't heard back from him.

Networking Mavin

Many months ago, when Lori was still in town and I was still an English teacher, I attended a Salsa Dance Party and Dinner.  A nice looking young man with excellent English taught the salsa.  The event was held at Rose's Tea House downtown, around the corner from Starbuck's and a few doors down from the largest bookstore in town.  It is not a Chinese style tea house, but Victorian style.

This man's name is Ron Leung, and I noticed that he is active on our Facebook group, 'Changzhou ex pats'.  Then in June he started another e-network, a Changzhou group on meetup.com.

By email he invited me to be a sponsor of the Meetup group homepage.  So I did.  I offered a 25% discount on the first purchase by anyone mentioning their membership to Meetup.

He came once when I wasn't here, and my staff remarked on him.  Handsome, Asian but maybe not Chinese, fluent in both Chinese and English.  Finally he came while I was in the bakery.  We chatted a  long time.  He is from Singapore.  As the FB group seems to serve a useful function as a social network, maybe Meetup group could serve more as a business network.  There are a number of us doing business here, after all.

Some time later he called and invited me to meet Kelly, the owner of Rose's Tea House.  He asked me to bring along some samples.  I did.  There was another ex pat woman there, as well.  We sat and had tea and my samples.  It was a very fruitful discussion.  They made me see that just being Asian wasn't that much of an advantage for a businessman in Changzhou.  They, too, met obstacles similar to my own; they felt like outsiders.  Kelly is from Taiwan.

We talked about a lot of things.  I mentioned my idea about talking with the bakery in Xin Bei about giving me space in their display counters.  Kelly knew this family, as they were also Taiwanese.  She said I could forget that idea, since this family company has its own factory; they wouldn't be wanting to share shelf space and help market my goods.

The Kelly connection is still blooming one petal at a time.  More about that later.

Bakery Blog

I kept the blog up sporadically.  What is the quote about faith?  Believing in what you cannot see?  My spirits flag when I put energy into something without any visible returns.  But I still think it's worthwhile, so I'll resume when my strength returns.

What strength, you ask?  I had a bought with the stomach flu, and was down for the count for a good three days.  I'm back at work now, but feverish, achy, and just plain tired.

The blog site does keep records of hits, however, and I did notice over 300 hits last time I looked.  That's got to mean something, doesn't it?  Or maybe Chinese people randomly searching for English to read.

The sandwich account mushroomed and then deflated again.  These customers have no idea the obstacles they've thrown my way.  I can't blame them for opting out of the roast beef day.  It's taking me an awful long time to figure out how to roast a Chinese beef to the point of tender.  I'll keep trying, though.  A few weeks ago they ordered 26 sandwiches on the roast beef day.  This week it is down to 8.

When it came time to send the invoice, we ran into more obstacles.  The school accountant requires a 'fa piao'.  This is usually translated to 'receipt', but that is such a flat word for it.  I typed out the invoice, printed it, and stamped it with my official stamp issued by the government.  No good.

Tina and I, and Candice my volunteer CPA had long consultations.  This fa piao was something that the tax office issues.  It is pre-printed sheets in a pad with rmb amounts on it.  Think 'traveler's checks'.  If your profits are such-and-such you can have so many rmb worth of fa piao.  You tear them out to equal the amount of purchase.  Books of denominations.  100, 50, 10, 5.  Tina went back to this office quite a few times.  On the first day she had to take Xiao Lan with her, because the business license is in her name.  This was towards the end of the moment, and she discovered it was important to get the books before the end of the month.  You could get just a set amount each month.  Optimist that she is, she was hoping we would continue to sell to the school at such volumes that one month's issuance wouldn't be enough to receipt two months of sales.  Ha!

That first day, they were gone about six hours.  I was in the store alone, and had to spend a lot of that in the kitchen.  I needed to finish the Jagerwirt Restaurant's ciabatta order, and I needed to start a sponge for the next day's sandwich loaves.  Meanwhile, on this particular mid week afternoon we happened to be busy, which is unusual.  It must have been Tuesday, because Peter wasn't there either.

In the long run, we did get the proper papers.  We printed the invoice, added the appropriate stamps and included the right amount of fa piao to cover the entire month, or three weeks of it anyway.  But for all their insistence, and assurance that once they had it they would pay us, payment has not come.

Marketing

I was bemoaning my lack of a good marketing plan on the FB ex pat group.  Scott Altman responded.  He is a fellow Long Islander.  He shares the family name of my nemesis at Corpus Christi school so many years ago.  George Altman got to sit next to me in third grade because Sister Agnes seated us alphabetically.  This blonde Adonis would forget to bring his history book to school.   Sister passed the task of reading down the rows, each child taking a turn.  George loved to hold his strong hand over the page so I wouldn't be able to see.  My name would be called out to read, but I couldn't.  I'd get scolded, blush furiously, and he'd chuckle with dark delight.

Scott and I started to communicate through the FB page because we were paisanos, lantsmen.  It's been the better part of the year, but I haven't met him yet face to face.  He owns a few stores in town, selling mattresses.  He shares the year between the two continents, apparently.  I thought he'd be back in country long before this.

He responded to my moan by saying: be of good cheer.  Soon I will be there, and I will put it all right for you.  Well, that's not a direct quote, but you get the idea.  His FB pic has him as a dapper young (young) man.

So there you have an update.  Sorry it's been so long in the coming.  Hope the next entry will be shorter in length as well as sooner in time.

October doldrums

This month produces the best weather all year.  [I'll say the same thing in April :-)].  I barely notice it.  I bike in during heavy morning traffic, too busy watching the crazy drivers and pedestrians.  The evening ride home is in a numb fog, exhausted.  Today I had to go out and sort some bank issues, which had me running about town long enough to notice the blue skies and perfect temperature.

Spending too many hours at the bakery has resulted in weight gain from lack of exercise.  How can one be so exhausted and yet lack exercise?  And gain weight when eating so little?  Anyway, this has pushed my blood pressure through the roof (well, actually anything above 150 diastolic is worrisome), and hasn't helped my despondent mood.

Luckily, I found a new friend who likes to swim.  She works for a former employer of mine, and even lives in my same old apartment.  She also is from New York.  So maybe now I'll get to swim once a week.  I've dusted off the treadmill, and am tenuously adding time there to my daily routine.  Man am I out of shape!  Thirty minutes at 4 KPH and I'm done.  I know if I keep it up I will improve.

Her name is Danielle, and reminds me of my niece with the same name.  She's also in her twenties, although my niece may have already moved out of that decade.  I lose track.

Ideas I've tried
I've tried keeping filled bags of bread on the shelf.  Doesn't seem to make a difference.  The customers complain that they can't see the product through the paper.  I haven't found a vendor for bags with plastic windows, although I see them in use at other stores.

I made pumpkin pie tarts.  Some Chinese customers didn't buy them because they thought pumpkin pie shouldn't be brown, but golden.  Like, they've ever tasted one?  Not.  Typical of the weird responses I get from the Chinese.

I still struggle against moving my product line closer to the Chinese bakery line. There's no way I can compete with them, I don't want to try.  I am a specialty shop, offering good wholesome breads.  I'd rather go down in flames than increase my sugar purchase even more.  It already galls me to see how much we spend on white sugar.

This will always be an issue.  It was, right from the beginning, when Mike and I parted ways due to this same issue.

Satina's Deli
I have been asked to provide sandwiches to a few children at the Oxford International College.  This is a K-12 school run by Brits, which teaches a British curriculum.  There are some ex pat families here with children, though most workers are either single men or on short contracts leaving their wives at home.  It is a new school, enrollment is low.  I don't yet know the mix between local Chinese kids and ex pat kids.

Some of the ex pat children refuse to eat Chinese food.  The headmaster has been concerned, and so he approached me with this idea.  I have been dancing with that group ever since they had a promotional gathering at Jagerwirt, the German restaurant upstairs from me.  There are 15 foreign teachers working there, and many of them don't like the Chinese food either.  They suggested that I speak with the Assistant Head Master, who is Chinese.  Our talks came to nothing.  Then last week the headmaster, a Brit, phoned and made a commitment to take 5 sandwiches a day for five days as a trial run.  That quickly turned into 7, and he also asked that on one day I provide 13, because the Chinese kids felt left out.  He figured the Chinese kids would quickly go back to their own food, since culturally the Chinese don't like to eat a cold meal.  The day we chose was the PBJ day, since it was so inexpensive an option.  I haven't gotten feedback yet on their reaction.

I am finding it very stressful.  I never thought of becoming a deli.  I'm a vegetarian again, and haven't cooked meat in a long time.  Even longer, I haven't roasted meat.  I bought a kilo of beef at the fresh market and tried to roast it.  It was a disaster!  What is more, I've never had to provide school children with lunches.  My only frame of reference is from my own childhood.  I used to love meatloaf sandwiches. Good clean ground beef is difficult to come by here, and very expensive.  There is no bologne, no liverwurst.

Not to mention packaging!  At other shops I've seen sandwiches offered in nice stiff plastic triangular containers.  I don't have any of those.  I have the same problem when I bake something gooey, like bread pudding, or pie.  I haven't adequate packaging materials.  This requires a trip around town to the various supply places,  in search of adequate materials.

Marketing
I am seriously considering closing the bakery for a week.  My workers sit around for half a day with nothing to do.  I want to lay off the dishwasher, the least useful of the lot, but she is a housewife thrilled to be out of the house, earning a small wage, and she is also the person whose name is on the shop's business license.  I hate to deprive the other two, Tina and Peter, of their income for a week.

I need to spend time building up a market.  That would require me making personal calls at international companies who have cafeterias.  What can I offer them?  I'd rather not have to develop a line of sandwiches, though that certainly seems like a market waiting to be opened.  I doubt they would just want to add bread to their lunch lineup, because it hardly fits with the rest of the Chinese meal.  One HR person, the wife of a friend, suggested her company might find my products useful when they have a special event.  She bought three dozen oatmeal cookies to share with her co-workers.

There is a Taiwanese bakery in Xin Bei that some ex pats like.  I am thinking of a way to approach them, to ask them to include some of my products in their line.

And then there is transportation.  I would really need my own delivery vehicle, since I'm finding it hard to find a same-day courier service.  Jolly's has fizzled as a venue.  None of the customers have picked up on the service I've offered.  There, too, I would need to spend my weekend evenings up there, talking to people, bringing samples, actively promoting my goods.  But when the weekend comes, I am always too exhausted  to extend my day into the evening and the long journey to the north.

I tried to set up a production schedule, so Peter and Tina would get into a regular routine.  But towards what end?  The breads sit in the freezer.  No one comes to buy.

My business card includes a web site.  This past week I have tried diligently to add a note every day, saying what we are preparing.  But if anyone tried the web site once and didn't find it dynamic, they won't have reason to go back again to see what I've added.  So I'm spitting in the wind.

Visa Issues
I probably have already written that I now have a business visa.  In order to get that visa I had to become a company.  'Satina's Western Style Food Consultant Company'.  I needed to invest 100,000 rmb in that business.  I didn't understand it fully, and now I am living the reality.  That money cannot be used for operating expenses.  It can only be used for capital investments.  That includes leasing a place, buying equipment, decorating the place, buying furniture.  Now I have to scramble to find the receipts for all this which has already been done. And how does a consultant spend 100,000 rmb setting up an office?

In China, 'receipt' has a very specialized meaning.  A company or vendor will seldom give a receipt unless specifically asked for, and often the price will be higher.  I think it has to do with taxes.  Once a receipt is given, the seller is required to report that to the tax department.  Otherwise, not.

One of my former Web students is a CPA, and has agreed to go on record as my accountant.  She is helping me through this morass   It is not just my inability to read and write Chinese.  It is a whole mind set, a different culture.  This is a game people play.  Filling out paperwork to comply with regulations, when everyone knows it is mostly smoke and mirrors.  Although I have probably spent in excess of 100,000 rmb of my own money since starting out on this bakery journey, I could not account for that money.  She, Candice, will use her experience to creatively fill in the forms to account for the 100,000, so that the government will release that money to me.  If I can't present that paperwork within a certain amount of time, they government will take negative action against me.  My company will be seen as not being legit, and I suppose they could revoke my permissions, my licenses.

Meanwhile, I want to send that money back to the States, as it is my only remaining savings!  That was supposed to pay for the completion of the house in Mexico.

Unfortunately, I sat down to run some numbers.  I calculated what I had actually invested, how much it costs daily to keep my doors open, and how much I would need to bring in daily just to cover all that.  I assumed a three year amortization on equipment, and one year on remodeling.  I would need to sell over 1,300 rmb per day.  As I said in my earlier post, I am lucky to sell over 100 rmb a day, and rarely do I sell as much as 400 in a day.

Things are not getting better, in that I am not seeing the same customers over time.  People sample my wares and may come back a few times, but then not.

I have to wonder what they think, when they look in the windows and find almost no product on the shelves. I just don't know how to overcome that.

The direction of my thoughts these days is to develop a marketing project to reach more commercial customers, and to find an outlet in Xin Bei.  It would also be nice to find a friend my age with whom to spend some down time.  I'm spending seven days a week at the bakery.

How's business? September

We have good days, at least once a week sales top 400 rmb.  Other days I need to stay open until 9 p.m. to bring in the last sales to top 100 rmb.  A few days a week I go home to nap in the afternoon, and then come back in time to relieve the night person who has to go home at 8 p.m. in order to catch the last bus.

On weekends I've begun the practice of coming in at 6 a.m. so that by 10 a.m. we can have baked goods on the shelf.  I don't know that it has been helping, but I think eventually it will pay off.

One good profit maker is 'veggie pie'.  For a late afternoon produce, I'll cook some veggies and wrap them somehow in dough.  I finally found a nice recipe in Rose Beranbaum's book for 'Sicilian vegetable pie'.  I have adapted that, which instructs for one long tube that is sliced at the dinner table.  I use her crust, more or less, and then make wraps three inches long.  I fold them lengthwise and tuck the ends under.

The first time I baked them I foolishly used steam.  They came out dark brown with scorched spots.  Never mind, Tina was on night shift and she sold them.  Customers turned their noses up until she cut one open and gave out samples.  They all sold out.

The next time I did them they were a nice light gold color, favored by the Chinese.  They too sold out.  The first time I used broccoli florets and jerusalem artichokes.  The second time I used the rest of that broccoli with the jerusalem artichokes, without affecting their popularity.

Tina has found her niche as the night person.  She watches the foot traffic outside our windows, and will go out and pull people in.  She is canny, and can sell damaged breads (when Peter rips the tops off by putting the lids on backwards, or I do the same by trying to remove the lid too soon).

I've started making Portuguese Sweet Bread.  Nice.  It reminds me of Pannetone without candied fruit. The recipe says you can put a shaped loaf in the fridge for next-day baking.  I tried that, but had to throw out the unbaked loaves.  The proof box (retarder) I use is cheap.  The bottom tray gets very hot, the top tray is cool.  In other words, it provides very uneven heat.  Those two loaves were on the bottom, and the heat was too intense for them.  Perhaps if I had tried to bake them sooner, it might have worked.  The recipe says they need about 4 hours to warm up before baking them after refrigeration.  These two loaves should have been baked no more than 2 hours after the cold.  Even then, who knows.  Now I will bake four loaves in one day.

In fact, I'm beginning to think that I have too many empty racks, and that is a psychological drag on business.   Either I remove one rack, or better yet, fill them up.  I think I will bake a lot of white bread and put that in brown paper bags and cover the shelves with those.  Then have the actual fresh-baked stuff on the top shelves.  I've been waiting for the money from the States before initiating that plan.  I'll talk it over with my staff and see what they think.

I am discouraged.  Money problems weigh me down.  How to increase sales?  The foreigners in Xin Bei have not caught on to my distribution system.  No one has used it yet, not even my faithful customer Ann Marie.  I think I must make a greater effort this week, to fill that basket again on Friday, maybe even again on Saturday.  I hate to make that trip, and it usually requires me to take an expensive taxi home, but I must do marketing.  Mind you, earlier I said I start work at 6 a.m. on the weekends.  It is difficult, then, to make the long ride north to Xin Bei early enough to be able to catch the last bus home.  Otherwise, I would not have time for a nap.  By 3 p.m. I am usually exhausted.  The question is, is the basket visible?  Has it been moved?  Have the menus and business cards run out?  I need to check these things for myself, no matter the effort.

The one time I did go, with the basket, Xiao Lan accompanied me.  It made the trip much more pleasant, and the weight of the loaves lighter as each of us took a handle.  But we must return to the shop by 5 p.m. when Tina leaves, or the place will be unattended.

Onus of being a company

The paperwork came through fast, once I signed all those papers.  The business visa was issued.  Actually, my passport contains a residence permit, and the stated purpose of my residence is written on there.  I presume it says 'business', though I haven't had it translated yet.

Now for the commercial bank account, and the much needed infusion of cash.

It took over an hour, going from one desk to another and back again, at the bank.  Then we needed to hop on the ebikes and go around the corner to the 'Peoples Bank of China', the equivalent of our Federal Reserve Bank.  Once back to the Agricultural Bank, I finally was given my passport back.  The clerk showed me a blue plastic card I needed, for doing transactions; she tucked it into my passport.  I noticed the large letters in English 'SAFE'. That's about all I saw.  The woman from the agency took control of it before handing me back my passport.

Then they told me there were regulations about how to use the money.  I needed a 'contract' for everything I purchased, not just a receipt.  What?  It was a bank worker who tried to explain to me, the official English speaker in that department.  I had no idea what she was saying.  I asked a number of times for a handout where all these rules were written.  Each time I was more insistent, and finally I was handed a much photocopied document in Chinese.  No English.

Me:  I need to pay back a loan.  What kind of documentation do I need?

Her:  Oh, you can't use the money for your personal needs.

Me:  This money was borrowed in order to rent my office, while I was waiting for these funds to arrive.

Her:  Oh.  [looking at her companion, rolling her eyes, looking up to the left.  A shrug of shoulders]

This is going to be very complicated!  I need to buy that water heater, I need to make improvements in the shop to increase storage capacity, to buy a much needed food processor, you know, personal stuff like that. I am registered as a consultancy, so how can I justify buying flour and any of the above listed things?

The Chinese are so very excellent at fudging all this sort of stuff.  I need to find the right person.  Shirley would have been that person, but now she's gone and opened her own business and is way too busy.  I will just have to keep looking.  I know the Lord will provide me with just the right person.

Candice came to my store yesterday. I taught her often at Web.  She was in the habit of texting me on Skype whenever she found me online.  It became a bother.  Her written English is not much better than her spoken English, which is barely understandable outside of the basic social chats.  I couldn't remember what work she did, but I had a niggling feeling.  So I told her I was looking for an accountant.  She said she was a certified accountant, and would love to help.  Later that day we had a long exchange on Skype texting.  Much of it was unintelligible.  She was trying to tell me how to use my account.  Hence, she is not exactly the right person to explain things to me, but once I understand the rules myself, she may well be able to translate what I want into what needs to be written.  As long as I know my needs clearly, I think she can fulfill them.

I am thinking about scanning the instructions and sending them to Su, the lovely lady at my wine tasting.  She loves translating and interpreting.  She may be willing to translate this document for me.  The obvious question is, why is there not already an English translation?  I think the answer is, there is but it is not widely circulated.  The instructions are in large type and bulleted, covering a little over two pages.

I think I might go to Monkey King and ask Lisa about this.  She surely must have to help Alex do his reports, and her English is quite good.

The other odd thing is that I need to transfer between 100,000 rmb and 101,000 rmb.  Not more, not less.  One Forex website said that equaled $15,831.  Well, but what about fees, and variable exchange rates.  I thought, well, round it off to $16,000 to be sure.  But when I ran that through a Forex converter, it was over the $101,000 limit!

All very interesting.  I remember a favorite expression of my dad's:  Makes you want to shoot your grandmother.  [He never knew his, as she was in Italy, just as I never knew mine because they passed away too soon]

Wine Tasting Evening

It was a long day of baking.  I arrived at six, and worked through until about 3.  Went home for a quick shower and nap, and returned after 5:00.  There were plenty of volunteers to help with the peeling of fruit, cutting of cheeses, and other tasks.  Tina and Peter were off duty, but they insisted on attending anyway.  Ricky came down from downtown a little early and helped supervise some of this.  She is an American whom I recently met.

Tina collected the money for me, and got people to sign in and leave a phone number.

I had hoped for 30 people, in which case I would have brought benches from home and extended the party to the outside.  In the end around 20 people came. It was crowded enough, though in a good way.  The acoustics suck, with such tall ceilings.  I really must find a way to install cheap baffling.

Funny how we only got this picture of the cheese platters before the event.  You can't see much for the shiny plastic wrap. Not of the subsequent photos included any food; only wine and people.

Rachel was working at Web, but her mom and dad came and set up the wines, the glasses, and stayed in the kitchen to serve.  I think her dad (silly, I don't know his name.  Chinese don't use names much) could have livened things up with wine information, but he doesn't speak English.

Xiao Lan is our dishwasher.  On Friday and Saturday she works the night shift, from 12 to 8.  So she arrived at work at noon wearing that pretty dress.  It is her name on my bakery business license.  I now have a second business license, in my own name, but that's another story.  We could not have opened the bakery without her amiable cooperation.

I baked many different kinds of breads, in small batches, hoping to sell some and get people started on new bread addictions.  

I had five kinds of cheeses.  A small round of Camembert and one of brie.  Then a few platters of cubed Ementaler, Edam and a mild cheddar.  I selected a good variety of breads.  I think lean breads go best with wine and cheese, so I had only one enriched bread in the lot.  That was the New York Deli Rye, which has onions in it.  The other breads were pain a l'ancienne, and the rest were sourdoughs.  I had a simple rye sourdough; a sunflower rye sourdough ring; a hardy dense whole wheat sourdough round.

It's just as well I can't find the picture of the sunflower ring.  It's the second time I've made it, and I still haven't got it right.  At least, the appearance is lacking, but not the flavor.

A pregnant couple wanted to come.  They are a lovely young white South African couple who would liven any party.  I reduced her admission price and prepared a special fruit drink for her.  I cut up apples and pears, peeled oranges, and a few slices of an unripe nectarine.  Tina was slicing, and after a few got into the mix she asked me about it.  The remainder of the nectarine went back into the fridge.  To that mixture of sliced fruits we added cinnamon sticks and a few whole cloves.  I covered the fruit with water and let it soak for a most of the day.  When I finally tasted it, it was sour.  I added a dollop of honey, and that did the trick.  It went into the fridge until 7 p.m., when it was then poured into two pitchers.  There were actually two abstaining from alcohol, but as the night wore on more and more people shared in it.  There was still a lot left over.  On Sunday I started work at 3 a.m. in order to prepare some special orders, and drank a whole pitcher of it by myself while working.  It made my body feel great!

South Africa on the left, Australia on the right.

I was pleased that Su and her husband Ge did come.  It took a while for them to integrate into the group, but once they did they fit right in.  They excused themselves a little after nine, and Ricky hitched a ride home with them.  The buses stop running north at 8:45.  Fortunately, it wasn't much out of the way for the couple.  

On Thursday I experimented with baking crackers and bread sticks.  We set them out on display.  The breadsticks sold out, but not the crackers.  I sealed them in a tin overnight, and was able to serve them Friday.  They were a hit.  

In the end, there was a lot of cheese left over, and sliced breads.  The stragglers finally got the signal to move on at 10:45, and I packed them off each single or couple with a sack of leftover cut bread.  No one bought a loaf, and only one couple bought a bottle of wine.

Financially it was disappointing, but it was a social success.  People enjoyed themselves, even suggesting that we do this once a month.  They were not much impressed with the wines, to hear tell. I need not have spent so much money on fine wines.  I could just as easily picked up a selection at Tesco, the evening would have been equally successful.  And I would not now be stuck with a large inventory of expensive wines.  I was forced to buy five cases, and received two more as a gift.   Among 20 people only 10 bottles were consumed.   I thought about doing it again in a month, but it feels more like a party.  So how could I charge people?  Then I realized that if we met at a restaurant we would also have to spend a lot of money.  I could hit on an admission fee that was both reasonable and economically sound for me.

 As I say, there was plenty of cheese left over. 

I'm having to add cheese dishes to use up that cheese.  These two are cheese scones and quiche.  The Chinese do not like the quiche.  They are used to sweet custard tarts which are ubiquitous here in Changzhou.  So they see this and expect it to be sweet.  Another reason is that it is cold.  They don't like to eat cold food.  So I only managed to sell two slices to the rare foreigner who walked in Sunday.  The rest became my meals for two days.

The scones will be no problem to sell, I think, but they only use cheddar.  I must find some use for the Edam.  I did put a notice on our Changzhou ex pat page saying that I'd share cheese with others.  By buying bulk I get a better price and selection than others can get, so I can resell it.  That worked, one person came in and bought 900 gms of Edam, another said she wanted Parmesan.  I haven't bought the latter, though would dearly like to.  Now I am motivated.

Would I do it again?

It will take time to see if as a marketing tool it is effective.  Perhaps I should have done more to encourage them to buy loaves while they were there.  They were in a party mood, not a shopping mood, however.  As for sheer fun, it was well worth all the preparation.  I had a good time.  I am not averse to trying it again in a month.  October 1 is a national holiday, people will be off from work.  Some will try to travel, but other of us more experienced China hands know better than to try to buck the traveling crowds and increased travel prices.  Perhaps it will be a good time to get just a small group together.  So very hard to predict.  Lori will be down from Beijing, staying on my couch.  (I would so love for her to stay in my spare bedroom, but that is now dominated by a 70 pound useless bread slicing machine that the vendor will not take back; but that's another story.) It might be easy to get a bunch to come down and visit with her.  We were a tight group when she worked here in Changzhou.

I don't know if it is difficult or easy to leave comments.  If anyone knows anything about acoustics, I'd appreciate suggestions on how to improve the acoustics in my place, without spending thousands.

exhaustion

Our 'night man' Johnny left to go back to college.  Each of us is having to take turns staying until 8.

It was my turn to stay, on Tuesday.  I had called Su, the wife of that lovely couple I met that night I was stranded outside Metro.  I reminded her of the wine tasting, and suggested she and her husband come, that I'd love for my foreign friends to get to know them.  She said that was the day they were sending their daughter back to college in Beijing, so maybe they'd be tied up.  But she did say she and her husband would like to come visit the shop.  They said they would come one evening.

We find that we do most of our selling in the evening.  Xiao Lan should have finished work at six.  Rachel finished at Web and came down, ready to go.  But her son had come around 5:00, and was playing a computer game.  Six o'clock came and went, and they still hadn't gone.  He was sitting at the selling counter, making it difficult for me to settle down there.  I asked them when they were leaving.  Rachel said they were waiting for their brother to finish his computer game.

I was thinking that I was very tired, and there wasn't that much to sell anyway, and I wouldn't mind closing shop early and going home.  I had brought a book to read, so once they finally left, after 6:30, I read for a little while.  Seven o'clock seemed a reasonable time to 'close early'.

The book, a thin forgettable mystery novel, had me pleasantly engrossed until a customer walked in.  I served the customer, and then Su and her family walked in.  We were talking away, when Jimmy walked in.  Rachel had told him that I needed to turn in my passport on Friday for a new visa, so he came to assure me that his wife would be working at the police station that day.  I introduced him to my new friends.

Other customers walked in, so I served them.  Jimmy chatted with Su's husband.  The family stayed until closing.  There were waves of customers.  I tried my best to keep up.  When Tina balanced the sales log the next day, she said I must have forgotten one sale because there was a 37 rmb discrepancy. Everything sold out, except of course the ciabatta.  One Chinese customer said she'd like to try one, but I told her it was chewy and she probably wouldn't like it.

During the lulls I was able to chat with this family.  They told me that they brought their daughter to meet me because I was an example to the young.  They had been telling her about my story.  She seemed a lovely girl, and expressed interest in hanging out at the bakery next summer to learn baking.

It was past 8 o'clock when the place emptied out.  Weariness swept back over me.  I looked at the sales log, which needed to be balanced.  I opened the cash draw and dropped it in.  I cleaned up the crumbs, put away the remaining three scones, locked up and went home.

I took a Sominex, put in my ear plugs, and lay down for a good night's sleep.

Wednesday was supposed to be my day off.  Rachel was free in the morning, and so we planned to go to Metro together.  I needed help with the heavy bag I'd be coming home with.  This trip was especially to buy the things we'd need Friday at the wine tasting.  Serving platters, cheese and sausage.

Tuesday night Jada texted me.  She had arrived from Shangdong.  After years and years in China, she was finally 'going home'.  A spinster in her 40's, she is from Hawaii.  She looks Asian, being half Filipino and half Chinese.  She has had endless trouble working as an English teacher in China.  One problem was that she didn't look Caucasian.  In some types of schools that's a problem.  Another problem is that she has psoriasis, so she tends to dress funny to hide her peeling arms.  But the biggest problem is her personality.

Back when I worked at Changzhou University we had tried playing badminton together, a game we both wanted to learn.  This lasted quite a few months.  We stopped playing during the summer, because it was just too hot.  We resumed again in the fall.  But on one of the last times we played, I was chatting away, so glad to have someone to chat with.  She admonished me not to talk during the play.

A pity relationship is hard to sustain, of course.  This one finally came to a head, and we agreed not to be friends.  I was relieved.  As time passed I knew I had made the right decision, when I realized I didn't miss her friendship at all.  She was active on Facebook, and so I knew that her contract was not being renewed and she'd need to find a new job.  The job she eventually found took her away from Changzhou.

She continued to text me, with updates on management moves at her new company.  Sometimes I replied, but often there was no response required.  She then began phoning me. Once I answered, but the other times I just let it ring.  I just didn't have the energy to listen to her whiny voice.

I learned through FB that she'd be leaving China, going back to Hawaii.  I think she trumped up some family illness, to keep face.  But I think she was terminally lonely and fed up.  She texted me that she'd be coming to Changzhou to close a bank account and buy dollars.  Her bank was in the same shopping area as my shop, so she said she'd stop in.

The sleeping pill kept me resting until after seven.  I got up, made some oatmeal to take with me (I love it with milk, and there's none home but lots at work), and arrived after 8.  Tina texted me to tell me that my 'Facebook friend' was waiting for me at the shop.

Once at the shop I was kept busy supervising Peter and Tina, eating my breakfast, starting the ciabatta, sorting out the til, and making a list of what we'd need at Metro. In between, I chatted with Jada.

Rachel came, and we headed out to Metro.  It is a long bus ride, with a change of bus.  We finished shopping around 11:30, with a huge Metro bag so heavy that even with the two of us we could barely move it.  No way we could walk all the way to the next bus stop.  We called a taxi, and as luck would have it there was one at the gas station which is at the entrance to the Metro service road.

Once back at the shop I looked at what was being baked and thought it would not be enough if we had traffic similar to the previous night.  I took some sourdough barm out of the fridge, thinking I could begin something for tomorrow anyway.  I made a cheese sandwich.  I used bread we bought at Metro!  I had bought a small loaf of rye bread, to see if I could figure out how it's supposed to taste.  Once the meal was eaten, I realized that the lethargy I'd been feeling since Sunday was still with me, in spite of one good night's sleep.

Thrice weekly I fill a standing order for the German restaurant upstairs for three flavored ciabatta.  Wednesday was a scheduled delivery day.  I had started the ciabatta before going to Metro, and Peter had taken it through the shaping phase.  I had not yet initiated Tina into this process.  Once in the proof box, the ciabatta needed lots of time until it swelled.  Tina saw that I was busy talking with some foreigners that had come in, asking for directions.  She took the initiative to put the ciabatta in the oven, which she had turned on some time earlier in anticipation.

I was unaware of this.  She came to me and mumbled something about steaming the ciabatta.  I said the ciabatta could wait a few minutes.  In a moment the guests left and I walked into the kitchen.

The ciabatta were in the oven!!!  And Tina had not turned on the steam, which can only be useful when done immediately upon putting them in the oven.  By the time she came to ask me, it was already too late, even if I had understood what she had done.

I blew my top.  This is the sort of thing the sweet thing always does.  She wants to be helpful, so she jumps in even if she doesn't know what she'd doing.  The oven temperature had not been turned down when the bread went in, which is supposed to happen as soon as the steam button is released.  But of course, she doesn't know that, because I've been training Peter, not her, in ciabatta making.

I had long ago told her that she needed to be aware of everything going on, so that if one baker gets distracted with other business the dough making that was interrupted wouldn't be ruined.  So she did as she thought she had been told.  I now need to teach her how to interrupt me and remind me what's cooking, and ask for instructions.  Poor girl.  I can't figure it out.  Is it because she isn't quite that bright?

Soon after that I went home.  Yu Xiao Mei was cleaning the house.  I remember this happened last week as well. Fortunately, she had started in the bedroom.  She closes the cats in there while she cleans the rest of the house.  I was able to go in there, close the door, and read until I fell asleep.

I slept a good sleep for a couple of hours, then got up, made a salad and watched a movie.  I had no trouble going right back to sleep at 9 o'clock.

Rachel asked me to dinner at her house on Thursday night, because it was her birthday.  I thought of all the things I had to do to prepare for the wine tasting event on Friday.  Most of all, I needed to get to bed early and get a good night's sleep.  She lives far outside of the city.  I wanted to turn her down, but how could I?  It was her birthday.  She persuaded me that someone would be there with a car and could drive me home.  A number of the other staff and teachers at Web would be there (all Chinese) and they were looking forward to sharing the evening with me.

If only I found it easier to fall asleep in the afternoons, like the Chinese do so easily.  I'm going to have to work harder at getting adequate sleep.  The thing is, it seems to me that soon I shall have to begin work at 6 a.m. so that we can open our doors earlier than 12 noon.  The other thing that needs fixing is the afternoon slump.  There is at least three hours in the afternoon when everyone sits down and plays on their computers. the baking is basically done, and afternoon walk-in customers are rare.

Forming a company

I knew that I needed to file with the city government as a company in order to get a business visa.  I had been to the government office to find out the procedure.  They were very helpful, and along with all the instructions they also gave me the name of an agency whose business is to process these applications.

I had asked Rachel to phone them.  She spoke a long time with them, but she must have been very busy with Web at that time because she did not give me much of a translation about what I needed to do.  She fed me bits and pieces, from which I could not lay out a plan.

Three weeks passed.  It was soon time again to try to renew my Hong Kong obtained tourist visa.

I went to Rachel and explained how time sensitive this whole thing was, and how helpless I felt not being fluent enough in Chinese to do it myself.  She was spurred on to tackle it.  We went in to see the agent, and got the ball rolling.

Two weeks earlier I had requested from my home bank a wire transfer of almost all the money in my US bank account, to carry me over in the bakery until business finally caught on.  I checked once at an ATM machine, and got a strange result.  It looked like too much money had arrived in my account.  Silly me, I did nothing.  Eventually, though, I checked again.  Apparently, the first read out had a computer glitch so that the decimal point was not in the right place.  No money had arrived.

Calling my bank in the States requires careful juggling of time.  They are about 15 hours behind me.  I finally hooked up with them, and asked about my funds.  It took a while to figure it out, but I had made a mistake.  I had looked up the SWIFT code of my bank online, instead of going to the bank and asking them for it.  I confused the Agricultural Development Bank with the Agricultural Bank, and sent the wrong SWIFT code. I held on the line quite some time until my bank managed to track down the funds.  They indeed were in Changzhou, but at a bank where I had no account.  The money would be returned to Seattle, and resent using the correct SWIFT code.

This last phone conversation took place a day before Rachel and I went into the meeting with the agent.  At that meeting I learned that funds transferred from my US account to my private China account would not count.  I had to first open a local commercial account, and then have 100,000 rmb wired into that account from the States.

I juggled the time difference again and called the Seattle bank back.  I asked if the funds had yet been received, they said no.  I then instructed them to hold them in the States until I called back with a different bank account.

That was lucky.  Sending money back and forth obviously includes a lot of fees.  I was relieved that I had stopped the money from bouncing around, generating more fees.  But there still remained a problem.  I was planning to transfer 60,000 rmb.  That left me 40,000 short.  The obvious solution was to find a local Chinese business person, a student of Web, who had that kind of cash in the bank and who was willing  to lend it to me for about ten days.  That was not a pleasant thought.

Amazingly, about two days after I went to the agent's office to sign the papers (no exaggeration, about fifty pieces of paper needed my signature; they don't except photocopies, so eight copies have to all be signed, and there were a few sets of those), they emailed Rachel to say that the Foreign Investment Management office had approved my application.  Now I need only pay the fees and get the gilded certificate, and I can then apply for a business license which I need in hand when I apply for the visa.  Did I mention the current visa expires September 9?  When it was issued I was told that I could not get any more renewals of tourist visa.  It has to be the business visa, or another trip out of the country.

In the end, I find myself short about $4,500.  Doesn't seem like much!  And in fact, if they would allow me to pay the $1,300 fees after I transfer my funds, I'm short even less than that.  It will be interesting to see where those funds come from.  As I say, I only need to hold the money in my Chinese account a few days, long enough for them to verify that it arrived.  Apparently, they don't have a system to continue monitoring it.

My visa expires Sept. 9.  On Sept. 6 I was informed that the business license had been granted, again at lightening speed.  So I took the passport to the police station.  However, I was informed that there was still one document lacking.  I called Su to interpret for me.  Once I discovered the problem, I called the agent I'm paying, and she spoke with the policeman.  We agreed to meet at the appropriate government building.  It was now 3:00, but the offices stay open until 5:30.  We got the missing document, and I tried to speed back to the police station.  However, my ebike was out of juice.  I was not far from the bakery, when I called Rachel and asked if I could swap bikes.  No problem, she said.  My bike died as I reached the bakery door, no exaggeration.  With this bigger, faster back I was back on my way to the police station.  In the end, the application was accepted, and I paid the 800 rmb.  Once it comes back, hopefully on Wednesday week, I will then be able to go to the bank and set up the account, and order the wire transfer.  I thought that I was desperate for that infusion of cash, but actually we've been limping alone fine.  Soon I'll need to buy a water heater, though, as the weather cools.

Have you read 'Poorly Made in China'?  It gives further insight into how appearance is more important than substance, to the Chinese way of thinking.

health inspectors

I look forward to the weekends, because I anticipate foreigners coming into the shop.  This is Tina's and Rachel's day off. On Friday we do all the preferments and other preps, so Saturday morning is easy for me and Peter by ourselves.

But this Saturday we got a surprise.  A Chinese man came in, speaking rapidly.  Peter wasn't up to the translation.  I grabbed my phone and dialed someone who could translate.  This took time.  This man began looking over his shoulder, walking back and forth between me and the front window.

I had called Shirley, who spoke with the man.  Then she told me what was up.  This man was from the sanitation and health department, and he was going around giving folks the heads up that tomorrow official inspectors would be coming around.  Changzhou is once again pushing for the 'civilized city' certification.  I thought they had already received it, so I am puzzled.

Shirley advised me to call Jimmy.  He is the Web student who is a manager in the city's health department.   I explained to Jimmy that his colleague was here, and could Jimmy speak with him.  Then I handed him the phone, and he spoke with Jimmy. After an animated conversation, I once again was handed the phone.  While Jimmy was explaining to me what was going on, the man actually walked outside, looked up and down, and came back in.  I suppose we were detaining him longer than he anticipated, and he was anxious to continue his Paul Revere mission.

The problem was, each worker needed to have a health certificate.  Peter smartly told the man that he left his home. Xiao Lan was the only one who had one, and she wasn't due in for another hour or two.  So we had nothing to show, at all.

On the phone, Jimmy told me to call Tina and tell her not to come into work tomorrow.  He sent Peter home to get a photo (no, Peter did not actually have a health certificate at home).  I had a photo handy, and turned it over to Jimmy.   Peter borrowed my ebike and returned quickly.  Jimmy took our photos and said he'd be back.

Xiao Lan finally arrived while Jimmy was there, and she inserted her little health booklet into the plastic sleeve with the shop's official health/sanitation certificate.

Some foreigners did actually come in.  At the same time Jimmy arrived.  Since neither Peter nor Xiao Lan speak English, I had to speak with the customers.  I explained the products, and eventually got around to talking about the wine tasting.  Eventually they left, and Jimmy asked what they were talking about.  Perhaps he wondered why I ignored him.

Jimmy had with him health certificate booklets for Peter and me.  He slipped them into the plastic sleeve along with Xiao Lan's.  Now we were official, all except for Tina.

Later, when Peter and I were alone, I thought it interesting that he pointed out to me these certificates were 'jia de', or fake.  In stating the obvious, it seems he takes it less in stride than I do.  He is a straight arrow, perhaps more for lack of opportunity than from moral conviction.

The afternoon was slow, so I was thumbing through the recipe book under the sourdough section.  I know people like breads with sunflowers in them, so I was happy to find a rye sourdough sunflower bread.  I got a cup of barm out of the fridge and fed it, and left it overnight.

Sunday came.  We had planned a lot of baking.  Our staffing, though, was slender.  Johnny had finished work with us and headed back to college.  Xiao Lan and her daughter Rachel both take Sunday off, a family day with dad.  We were on a new schedule now, with people taking turns doing a night shift to compensate for the loss of Johnny.  This meant that Peter had a half day today, from 7 to 11.  And now, no Tina.

When I arrived around 8, Peter had the kitchen lit up with energy.  He had two bowls filled with recipe, the oven was baking the cinnamon buns, and the proof box held a couple more bowls.  I wonder if he arrived before seven!  It normally takes the cinnamon buns a couple hours to warm up and rise enough to bake, after taking them out of the fridge.

I was trying different scenarios to get the evening shift taken care of.  Peter must have called Tina, or perhaps she called him to find out what was going on.  At any rate, Peter was unwilling to return in the evening to close at 8.  He wanted Tina to do it.  And apparently, she wanted to do it.  At any rate, Peter left at 11, after making a quick trip to the supermarket across the street to replenish our egg supply.

The day progressed with no inspectors in sight.  So I called Tina and asked her to come in at 5.  I must say, it was a quiet afternoon.  No one came into the shop.  I had not brought my computer.  I had only the cook books to amuse myself.

I did bake the sunflower recipe.  It didn't look much like the book photo!  I did have to improvise some, because the recipe called for a soaker of coarse rye, which I don't have.  So I used some biga from yesterday, and threw in a handful of rye flour.  It is supposed to look like a large doughnut, with a square superimposed on it by pressing down on the dough four lines before baking.  After the fact, I noticed that the instructions direct you to put flour into the lines after you've pressed them, so they won't fill back in.  Mine filled back in.  Also, the center hole I made was way too small, so that it looked like a belly button.  Now, if I can get someone to buy it and let me slice it and take a taste...  But no more foreigners came into the shop after that.

Around 4 I was in the kitchen putting something together for tomorrow, having been inspired by the cookbook to actually, finally, try making french bread.  I heard noises at the front door.  Jeff Wugang, his wife Danny and their daughter came in.  They were on their way to the new Eagle Plaza a block away, for their daughter's dance recital.  They had some time to kill, so we sat and chatted.  It was nice to see them.  I think the last time I had seen Danny was when we all had gathered to eat at a Japanese restaurant near their home.  It was so long ago that Gregg and I were still together.

Of course, I had more recently seen Jeff.  He was the one who had turned me on to the Bali coffee investment plan, and had been with me at the dinner a month ago, with those people.

I sent them home with a few scones.  The scones were dropping off in popularity, and I could see we'd have a lot left over.  I was happy to share them.

At one point in the lonely afternoon, I had to go to the bathroom.  What to do?  I now have a standing order with the German restaurant upstairs to provide them with three 12" ciabatta three times a week.  They were ready to be delivered, and the German restaurant has a nice western toilet.  Problem solved!  I put a note on the 'open' sign saying I'd be back in five minutes.  I took the elevator up to the third floor, and killed two birds with one stone.

I doubt I'd been missed.

Tina arrived at five, and after she went to the toilet, I left.  Time to get back to the five cats.  Did I mention? I had been keeping mama cat and the dark calico at the shop.  Jimmy pointed out the obvious, that the two cats must not be at the bakery when the health inspectors came.  

August Moon

When I need a really good sleep I use earplugs.  They are in short supply, disposables, so I don't use them often.  Even with the earplugs, as dawn crept through the curtains I heard drums, bells and chanting.  I united my heart with the prayers rising on the wind, and kept my weary bones in bed.

At last I heard the rapid paced chanting and drumming that I now know is the final prayer, so I got up and looked out the window.  I threw on a dress and grabbed the camera. I took a picture from my bedroom window before I got in the elevator, knowing it would all disappear quickly.

The red cushions were filled with bowing neighbors just moments before, the table resplendent with fruit offerings and candles. The tree (lower right) obscures the offering fire, and the picture of the Buddha.  At the center of it all is Guanyi, whom the Tibetans believe is Avalokitishvara or Chengrezig.

The monks have removed their saffron robes (they must be hot) and pass items down from the elaborately constructed altar.  Soon I see these tables carried back to the elevators and apartments.

Yesterday Shirley came by the bakery to pick up her order of 15 cinnamon buns to take to Shanghai Monday.  She arrived after six, much later than she said she would.  I should have gone home, I had been there twelve hours, but it was the dishwasher's day off so I was sweeping up the accumulation of crumbs, washing the floors, and such.  I asked her where she had been all day. She said she went to her husband's family home in the countryside to make offerings, because it was 'the day of the ghosts'.

I took note of the phase of the moon on August 26, and noticed it was a waxing half moon.

Whatever this auspicious time is in the Buddhist calendar, my neighbors are marking it with prayer and burnt offerings to the dead.

I have noticed for weeks now that the little old ladies who sit under the eaves of the building were folding these papers, accumulating sacks of them.  This wall is part of the stairwell on the ground floor.  There's also a service closet, near the elevator, loaded with them.

This kind of open fire would be unthinkable in the States.  In fact, while I was standing there a wind blew cinder to the tree and shrubs.  But there were enough glowing embers remaining for one slow poke to place her offering.

I see I also captured the three-wheeled bike.  Those blue bikes, some of which have electric motors, many of which are still powered by foot pedaling, are ubiquitous.  You can also see a bit of a monk's saffron robe at the right edge of the photo, and the Buddha picture in front of the garbage can.  This picture was just before the gust of wind scattered the embers into the bushes, chased by ladies with straw brooms.

It seemed to take only moments before the tables were lined up to be taken back on the elevators to their apartments.  The monks pitched right in with the lifting and carrying.  That is a monk in the middle of the picture.

Ah well, it's supposed to be my day off today, Monday.  I can catch up on the zzz's later, I guess.  I may as well go in to the bakery and worked on the ciabatta.  We have a standing order for three 12" ciabatta three times a week.  Yesterday Peter, then Peter and I made two attempts.  We didn't get it right, wasted a lot of expensive filling in the process.  I'd better take care of it myself, or lose the account.