Security badge and Week 2

This afternoon I went back to the consulate for my security badge, and had no problems. I even got a chance to stop by the HR office and pick up a more detailed description of a Commercial Assistant job that has opened up, which I'll pass on to a guy I know who's looking.

It would be a great job for me, too, except that it only pays about $12,000 a year -- fine in China, but not so good for paying off student loans. I'll stick to the U.S.

Tomorrow's the big Labor Day BBQ at the consulate, which I'm excited about. I'll be hob-nobbing over hot dogs with those whose jobs I've envied for the past seven years.

As far as this week is concerned, it was pretty interesting. There was a meeting on Tuesday which I think will be weekly -- it's nice because I get to hear what's going on in the differenct sections of the consulate as well as what the other teams are doing within this office.

On Wednesday I sat in on a courtesy call by some government employees from a city in Anhui province. I brought my notepad and pen to take notes, but because the entire meeting was in Chinese (two Chinese officials, my native Chinese boss, and me), I didn't understand a thing and was really frustrated.

The meeting ended with no better understanding. I have a page filled with notes, but the only thing I wrote down were questions like, "Who are they? Why are they here? What am I supposed to be scribbling?" I had to get all the details afterward.

Thursday and Friday were dominated by a search for accurate GDP-per-capita (国内生产总值人均) figures on nine of the largest cities in China. Surprisingly, this was hard to get, as there is no central source for this information on the Internet.

We had to check the Chinese versions of the city webpages for this information, but even that was not completely reliable -- along the coastal cities there's an officially registered population and an unofficial migrant one of people from the countryside working outside their "hukou." (This, by the way, creates a societal stress that results in situations like this.)

So there's no way of knowing whether the city is using the official or actual population. The actual population would be more accurate, but of course there's no authoritative figure. The city government has an interest in using the lower, official number, but that sacrifices accuracy for the sake of precision.

So we used the best numbers we could find, but like many other figures coming out of China by government authorities, they really don't mean anything.