Jakarta trip

The power company I work for provides staff and services to new power plants in China as well as Sudan and Indonesia. Because of this, and also because the Vice Governor of this province was going to be visiting Indonesia, the boss asked me to go to Indonesia with him for a week. A free trip to a new country? I gladly obliged.

After taking all of Sunday to get from Xian to Jakarta, the Monday morning we took a taxi for a meeting in a subsidiary company of the Indonesian State Grid. This company owns one of the power plants that we've operated for the last two years in Sumatra, and the boss would like to be awarded the contract for the next two years as well. It was more of a small chat than anything. Unlike most Chinese bosses, my boss can speak reasonable English, so he did the negotiations by himself, with another translator (who sometimes acts as he business assistant) and me sitting around the table. I wasn't properly introduced, and the slightly nervous sideways looks I was getting from the Indonesian manager we were meeting showed he was slightly confused by the presence of this random Western person.

Afterwards we went for lunch with a Chinese student who works part time in Indonesia for an affiliated company. It was only after a while that I realised it was Ramadan, but the locals tucking into chicken and rice didn't seem to be too put out by it.

We took a 'microlet' back, which is a cross between a minibus and a taxi that ferries people around some parts of Jakarta. The temperature was in the mid-30s outside, and even hotter inside. Jakarta has apparently developed without much centralised planning. The traffic is pretty shocking, and if you get behind one of the bajahs (a round box on three wheels), you'll have a face full of exhaust fumes.

We were staying in Kota in the north part of Jakarta, which is where many of the overseas Chinese live and do business. In 1998 there was a backlash against the Chinese community, when many Chinese and overseas Chinese were killed, raped and had their businesses destroyed. When you mention Indonesia to a Chinese mainlander, this is the thing you are most likely to hear in reply. Part of the reason for it was to do with the fact that the Chinese business community is very strong, and they are generally richer than the locals. The big apartment block opposite my hotel, where my boss has a rented apartment, is populated almost exclusively by Chinese, including over 2,000 attractive young Chinese women who can earn up to a million RMB (90,000 pounds) a year in the various 'entertainment venues' in this part of town.

In the afternoon, I was free to wonder round. I walked south along the main road, which was lacking a pavement but did have a large open sewer running down the middle. It also had hundreds and thousands of small-engine motorbikes zooming along. Some of the junctions looked like someone had double booked a motorbike race and an F1 race on the same track, as motorbikes and cars vied for space. The huge Independence Monument in the centre of town, just over the road from the Presidential Palace, is a very tall and boring edifice commemorating independence from the Dutch. The open area surrounding it is huge, and included a deer park and plenty of military police vehicles. With such a huge rich/poor gap, it's probably a wise decision.

For the first three nights, the boss put me up in a very nice four-star hotel, where they have breakfasts which actually fill you up and the English-language Jakarta Globe gets put through you door in the morning. From reading it, it would seem corruption is a major issue in Indonesia. And when we went to a follow-up meeting the on Tuesday, there was a 'Fight Corruption' plaque in the meeting room, signed by senior members of the Indonesia State Grid. The meeting was to decide the requirements for bidders for the contract discussed the previous day. Asking one of the bidders (ie, us) to help design and advertise the bid proposal seems stupid to me, especially when our boss made recommendations that meant only our company can fulfill the requirements. Perhaps our boss was displaying some of the 'acumen' that has made the Chinese overseas community quite wealthy.

That afternoon, I wandered up the road to the very north of Jakarta, which is where the old colonial town was based. There were a couple of nice old-style buildings, but I was struck by the rundown nature of the area. Some of the old buildings looked like they had been bombed, and the surrounds were particularly insalubrious. I went to the internet bar to see if there was actually anything to do in Jakarta. It seems if you like heat, traffic jams, clubbing, prostitutes and expensive beer, Jakarta is for you.

On Wednesday, we took a taxi and sat in traffic for half the morning on our way to the Sultan hotel, a magnificent five-star hotel where the Shaanxi government delegation and other heads of Shaanxi industry were staying. It turns out we (the business assistant and myself) were going to translate a Memorandum of Understanding for the Shaanxi Minerals and Metallurgy Group Limited, one of the largest state-owned enterprises in Shaanxi and also in the Indonesian market. For whatever reason, they didn't have anyone available to translate it, so we gave the boss enormous face by translating it in the hotel lobby for him. And because he had a foreigner (me) doing it as well, his face was even bigger.

In the afternoon, after another excellent Chinese lunch, I took the bus to Blok M, a place sounding like part of a Dutch prison but actually a part of south Jakarta with lots of shops, Westerners and bars. Jakarta does at least have a few designated bus lanes, making bus travel much quicker and cheaper than taxis. The main bar street was quite disappointing, and the whole area was just one big shopping fest. Apart from queuing for ages in a sweltering hot bus station, I didn't stay long.

On the Thursday morning, we went back to the hotel via a very convoluted route thanks to the driver getting completely lost. We were to meet with the Vice Governor of Shaanxi province. This was the sole purpose of my coming to Indonesia - a chance for the Vice Governor (and other important Shaanxi people) to see that my company has a white Western foreigner working for it and is therefore a great company. We had to put on the blue power plant overalls our company's engineers wear, partly to look orderly, and partly to prove that I really do work here. We waited outside one of the hotel meeting rooms, waiting for the Vice Governor. While waiting, I found out that our boss is the younger brother of one of the top leaders in Shaanxi government, which goes some way to explaining why this company does quite nicely.

When the VG came out, our boss pounced, and introduced the three of us to him. Naturally, he was quite surprised to see me, and more more surprised when I spoke Chinese to him. The boss introduced me as 'Director of Translation', which is not true at all. The VG, a short, elderly, unassuming man, asked whether I really do work here. He checked again, complimented me on my Chinese to which I replied 'it's just average', which is definitely the right answer when someone, especially someone important, compliments your Chinese. He was impressed that I knew how to be modest (perhaps thinking modesty is something only Chinese can do), and with that hurried off to his next engagement, surrounded by a melee of other people.

And that was that. The entire point of my week in Indonesia was completed in half a minute. A bit later, we attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony between the largest company in Shaanxi - Shaanxi Auto Company - and an Indonesian company, where the Chinese company sold them 300 dumper trucks, some of which were parked outside the hotel for everyone to admire. A buffet lunch with no chairs for underlings followed, and before we left I managed to get the QQ [instant messaging service] number of the rather attractive and possibly useful secretary to the head of the Shaanxi Trade Promotion Department.

***

Still having a day and a half left, and with Jakarta offering nothing much more to see or do, I went to Indramayu, a town three hours from Jakarta where we have 20 or staff working at a new power station. Also going back were the business assistant and the two engineers who had come yesterday to be at the morning's main event. Halfway into the journey, I got talking to Mr Hou, a chemistry engineer on site. The night before, dinner conversation had resolved around the main topic of the week - 'China is more developed than Indonesia', 'Jakarta is a mess', 'Indonesians are not as rich as Chinese', etc, etc. Mr Hou had not said one word the entire evening. He looked slightly lost.

However, during the car journey on the way to Indramayu he talked at length and in depth about his past. He told me he was sixty years old, which would have made him sixteen in 1966, the start of the Cultural Revolution. I find this part of history fascinating, because it's not in a museum or a book, it's living people with stories to tell when conditions were very different to what they are now.

People of this age are called zhi qingnian, and they have similar stories to tell. He told me how he had left school at sixteen to go down to the countryside to do farmwork. Schools were closed, teachers paraded through streets as 'dunces', and students were sent to the countryside or joined the Red Guards. He stayed there for five years, until eventually he was allowed back, and found a job in a power station.

In 1964, China successfully launched an atomic bomb. "We had a special physics lesson for the whole school, explaining how it worked and everything. I remember that particularly clearly. And Old Mao, when he heard the news, didn't believe it at first".

"1960 was a particularly tough year. No-one had enough to eat. Everyday 'chi bu bao' (feel hungry). It was tough." His withered appearance, thinning hair, stooped posture and thick local accent were testament to the hardships that most young people now in Chinese cities have absolutely no idea about.

I ventured that in those days there were no thieves because there was nothing stealing. "No! It was because if you had something nice that no one else had, people would come round 'on patrol', asking were you got it, making accusations. Then more people would come. They'd ask a lot of of questions, it was dangerous. It was better not to get involved."

People of his generation generally admire Mao greatly. Given the enormous sway one man held over so many people for so long, I asked him what he thought about Mao. "Obviously, towards the end it wasn't perfect. People were scared, they couldn't give him advice. But I still think he's definitely a great man. Deng Xiaoping ruled in peacetime, so it was easy for him. Mao fought off the Japanese, Chiang Kaishek and uninvited foreign influence. He took China out of its highly backward state and made it stand up on its own two feet. People were hungry in the sixties, but better off than in the '30s and '40s. He was also a great military strategist and man of literature. For me, he's still a great man."

He talked about the work he has to do now. "Back then, I'd get 1,000 yuan (90 pounds) a month, and everything was simple. Now everything is done on computers. It's tiring, and my eyes hurt after a while."

Meanwhile, the other two people had not paid the slightest bit of attention to anything he said.

***

The next day, Friday, I had a quick tour round the power station before returning to Jakarta. Because of Idul Fitri, the end of Ramadan, people were streaming out of the capital to return to their hometowns, making the roads a nightmare. Our local driver, after driving for much of the way down the hard shoulder, took a detour through the very pretty countryside. Field after field of green crops and tropical trees, with rows of colourful houses with porches overlooking a bumpy old road and small flowing river, all under a bright blue sky, all a marked contrast to the greys and browns of northern China. The two (different) Chinese engineers with me were busy discussing how backwards Indonesia is, but I thought it was great.

Saturday was not a day I was looking forward to - a full day travelling with the boss. It started by the two engineers supposed to be coming back with us missing their flight. The inability of anyone in our company to plan anything can be quite amazing at times. On the plane to Guangzhou, the boss ignored my book-reading attempts to talk to me.

He is a short, fat man, 45 years old, local to this province, a good brain, not flashy, but not a people person, and obsessed with earning money. As we were flying over Hong Kong, he said HK was not nearly as good as Shenzhen, just over the border, because Shenzhen has a wider range of things to buy. Shenzhen is one of the most soulless places on the planet, but good for earning money, so I was not surprised by his choice.

We spent the afternoon in Guangzhou, an enormous, ugly, hot, shopping-mad city in southern China that I could not wait to escape from. At midnight, we arrived back in a chilly Xian to be driven home slowly and with two stalls by the boss's wife.

Dinner with Mr Wang and Mr Deng

From about April to October 1st, our company institutes a one-and-a-half-hour lunch break. Never mind that the receptionist likes to play pop music at excessively high volumes, the extra half hour is meant for us to sleep. Anyway, it means that by six o'clock, I am very hungry. Fortunately, there are many restaurants in the vicinity of the company. One is a hu lu tou restaurant, which is a fairly prevalent dish here in Xian.

I usually go there once a week. It consists of 'mo', a type of round bread, which you break into pieces yourself. Add in some rice noodles, mushrooms, quails eggs, herbs, spices and sheep intestines and it makes for a good dish. It seems the phrase 'sheep intestines' does not have much appeal, but if we eat sheep meat, why are the intestines any different? And, indeed, sheep blood, as someone quite accurately pointed out to me last week.

Anyway, at about 6.05pm, after parking my so-rubbish-it's-not-worth-stealing bike, I walk into the hu lu tou restaurant. Just as I think it's fairly empty, I see, at a table in the corner, sit Mr Wang and Mr Deng.

Mr Wang, more generally known as Wang Zong, is an important person in our company, project manager for various projects at home and abroad. I first met him properly during the spring outing our company arranged in April. He has, as a fellow translator pointed out at the time, a tremendous 'ability to summarise', which is great in an age of waffle, guff and spew. He spoke to me about Chinese culture, and is convinced I should become a Chinese professor (possibly because he knows I can never learn power station engineering). Probably about 50-55 years old, he has spent his entire life in a power plant. A power plant in China, particularly the 'old days', is a life. The power station complex consists of schools, hospitals, leisure and, of course, a job.

He speaks directly, to the point, without airs and graces, and with a thick North Eastern accent that makes it even harder to understand what he says. And I knew when I bumped into him evening, it would be more of the same intense listening practice. A warm welcome to sit down and join him and Mr Deng (project manager for a power station in Indonesia) was followed very closely by a sharp call to the waitress for another bottle of baijiu.

Baijiu is the Chinese liquor of choice. If you are a man, and especially if you don't smoke like me, then you need to be able to drink baijiu. Fortunately I can, so I quite welcomed the entire bottle being poured into my glass.

Firstly we ate 'liang cai' (cold dish), which is like the first course of a two course meal. During that, we drank the baijiu and spoke about many topics. Being a foreigner and an Englishman, we mainly spoke about foreign affairs, England and China. Not unlike many Chinese, Mr Wang spoke at length about the humiliation suffered by China from 1842-1949. They don't necessarily want to be number one, and they dislike, even mock, America for trying to be so. But they do not want to be bullied. They admire Stevenson, Watt and Britain generally for being a small country yet able to produce many famous inventors and conquer half the world's land mass.

The main course was eaten quite swiftly. Afterwards, the beer was finished, and more was talked about. I tried to ascertain exactly why Mr Wang would work for our company, at a time when working for a state-owned company is seen as a perfect job. He gave a full and detailed answer, which I completely failed to understand.

A short time afterwards, we left the restaurant. I unlocked my bike - correctly identified by Mr Wang as 'that one that no-one would want to steal' - and rode home.