China Blog by Chinaorbit.com

One week before the national holidays in China tickets to Germany where quite expensive, probably around 1500 Euro for a flight from Beijing-Frankfurt during the holidays.

For the next Christmas holiday period I booked my flight now already and only had to pay about 320 Euro without tax (I think, including tax the ticket will cost around 400 Euro).

My accountant called the travel agency twice just to make sure that it is really a round-trip, not a single-flight.

• I have a client in Beijing
• the client has a graphic designer
• the graphic designer has a new website
• the website of the client suddenly has a link in white colour on white background on the mainpage, which points to the website of the graphic designer.

The graphic designer is a very nice guy, but on the other hand my client is paying me for maintaining his website. I guess, I have to give the graphic designer a few hints.

P.S. Should I post this under Chinese culture or “experiences in China“?

Recently, I received a phone call from a Chinese company, which wanted to sell ink for a printer. I have a laser printer and told the sales girl

- she could also sell me an inkjet printer, like this I could get their ink much cheaper than the normal market price

- – my laser printer is new and I do not need any ink or a new printer.

- an inkjet printer has lots of advantages

- – I really do not need anything

- she would like to talk to the boss of the IT-department

- – this is useless, If my company had an It-department, I would advise the boss of this department NOT to buy a printer

- some sounds I did not understand

- – I asked, if she could repeat the last sentence, i am a foreigner and this was too fast

- she did not believe me and said, I was from some province

- – no province, I am from Germany 德国 (Deguo)

- Germany is not a province – where is Germany

- – Western Europe

- no way, I must be from Guangzhou

- – how does she get this idea

- in Guangzhou, people aslo spoke in such a strange way

…

normally, I am quite happy, if a Chinese takes me for a Chinese, but this time, I was not really happy about it.