Too Many, So Few

I have a course on operation management and we visited Mercedes-Benz Ludwigsfelde GmbH this week. After walking in the factory for around 10 munities, my friend said, “Umm, it is nothing special.” I responded, “Come on, we haven’t seen any workers so far. All those noisily busy working machines remind me of The Matrix.” It’s like a post-modern scene. I’ve never visited any car factory in China, so I am not sure whether they look the same as what I saw here. But whenever I picture a working scene in full swing in China, I intended to imagine there are a lot of workers, employees, managers and so on.

Once a professor who has been to China told us it was amazing and funny to see so many workers on the building site. “Too many,” she said, “can’t believe it!” We heard that and laughed. “In fact, we are amazing, too. Not about how large the population on building site in China, but how less the workers are on building site here.” There is a building under construction on the way to school. It was built since I’ve been in Berlin, and it’s still not finished! The most interesting part is in this undone building I’ve never seen more than 5 workers at the same time. This will absolutely never happen in China. Usually, hundreds and thousands of people working together, finish a large project in short time. One very famous example is the construction of Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, at that time, a floor of a skyscraper was built in 3 days. This super speed is called “Shenzhen Speed” then. It also represents the high development speed of China. (for further reading: Shenzhen Speed, China Grows With “Shenzhen Speed”) There’s even a song about it,read the lyrics

I am afraid this kind of scene will only happen in country like China. First of all, it is developing country. Second, it’s a developing country with huge population. Once there is a joke about why not use street sweeping machine instead of street sweepers. The reason is it will cause unemployment. Of course, nowadays, sweeping machines are applied everywhere and street sweepers are less than before.

But factories in China are more like labor intensive rather than technology intensive. There are large group of people who are not that well-educated and skilled working on production lines of textile factories, shoes factories and so on. These people are more likely to be unemployed. Do you know why products made in China are cheap?-Because those workers are paid a little. Why don’t they fight for their wages? -Because they have no choice. It was a little bit surprising for me to see labor strikes are widespread in Europe. I could not imagine a massive strike in China like what in France. In China, if you don’t want a job no matter for what kind of reason, others will rush to it.

The large population causes a lot of problems. On the other hand, it is a sort of power in some situation, some time. Naturally, I hope one day China can produce and export products with more technology like Germany does. Maybe not now, not at the time when this country still nurturing more than 1.3 billion people.

You Dance, We Sing.

One of my dorm neighbors from Kazakhstan gets 22 years old this week. She cooked a yummy dinner for us. After eating, they planed to dance. “We are going to dance Salsa (I think what they said was Salsa, not sure though.). You are coming right? ” I smiled and I knew the smile would look strange. The truth is my Polish neighbor has invited my Chinese friend and me to dance Salsa with them for more than 3 times, and every time we were hesitating for a while and refused in the end. “Well, my former Japanese neighbor told me he couldn’t dance either.” My Polish neighbor said. Apparently, it is still a mystery for her. Everyone was surprised when I said we don’t dance at all. “Everyone” includes friends from Poland, from Germany, from Kazakhstan. “If so, what do you do then?” “Well… It may sound quite strange to you, we sing.” We all burst into laughters. Yes, yes, we don’t dance, we sing.

The first party we joined in Berlin was welcome party last semester. We left at the time when they said the party actually just started. We didn’t go home yet, instead, we went to karaoke straight away after leaving dancing floor.

“How can you dance all night?” I asked my Polish neighbor. “How can we sing all night?” She asked back.

In fact, I don’t know the answer. I would explain it as culture difference.

There are clubs and parties in China like what are here in Germany. But one of the most popular things should be karaoke. It was invented by Japanese and soon spread to whole Asia. Sometimes you sing with one or more persons, sometimes you sing alone. It is really a good feeling when you hold a mike and sing a song you like. I do enjoy the feeling even though I am not at singing.

So, I am thinking maybe go dancing next time and invite others to sing with us. Who knows if it is not a chance to explore a new land of pleasure?

here are two videos about dancing and singing. enjoy~!

Spring Here, Summer There.

(photo by me. take in Berlin)My friend in Chengdu (the largest city in southwestern China, check it out in Google map) told me about their hot early summer life and asked what the weather I was enjoying in Berlin. It was apparently hard for them to believe that I was still wearing jacket these days, not to mention that winter here lasts unbelievably long. If it is “after winter comes spring” in Chengdu, it will be like “after 2 winters comes spring” in Berlin. The good thing is, finally, spring is right here, and everything around proves it is worthy to wait that long.

I went to Britzer Garden last weekend. Flowers there were just more than beautiful. The whole garden was full of sunshine and full of people. It really reminded me my hometown Chengdu, where people were doing the same thing in spring. We put flowers in the garden. But more often, people are willing to go to country side like longquanyi where they can fully enjoy casual life in nature. Various fruit trees with flowers are everywhere on hillsides. When flowers are gone, fruits are coming. In summer time, people go there to enjoy casual countryside life and back with several boxes of pears, peaches, and loquat fruits and so on. You buy them right after they are picked from trees! Or, you can pick them by yourself！

(photo by me. take in Berlin–>)

Of course, there are a lot other activities during spring and summer in Chengdu, which, I believe, will be vastly different from what in Berlin. I really like to hear what you guys want to know. Leave a comment here and you will get better detail information in the next entry. Try it~~!

（<–picture is from wnagdj, take in Longquanyi.）

favorite blog?

Well, it’s really a little bit hard to point out the”favorite” thing. I read numberous of blogs through Google reader everyday. I though for a long time and picked this one, one of the blogs I’d love to read whenever it is updated: Autorun@蚌病生珠.  It is a blog mainly about photograph. It is a self-host blog, based on WordPress. Self-host blog has quite some advantages. There are more choices of plugins and more space for individualized design. This one is a good example.

I actually quite share the taste of the design of this blog. Yes, it looks pale at first sight. But when you pull the page down, it’s easily to find that there is a colorful world inside. Considering there are hundreds of pictures, the simple back ground makes the blog neat and tidy. I believe that even without understanding the text, this blog is still inviting to some extent.

The writer of this blog is a photographer who has just started his professional photography career since a year ago. But the life of daily photographing has lasted for pretty some years. Almost every post has photos attached, which makes everything far more vivid and interesting.

This blog is well arranged. All the links and information are readily available. This guy is running his own photography business. This place turns out to be a good platform to advertise his business in a casual way. He once sold self-designed postcards through this blog. I think it worked really well.