Dingxi Day 3 — First Day at Work

Before coming, I’d heard about how inefficient the administration is here, how corrupt the civil servants are… But my experience over these two days is completely different! We got assigned on the second day and started work on the third — didn’t even get a chance to familiarize ourselves with this prefecture-level city. Efficiency is no worse than a foreign company!

So-called “work” actually has no specific tasks (same for the others). We sit in the top-floor office of the city government building, open our laptops, and do our own thing. Not being able to access the internet is still frustrating. The Informatization Office — why can’t they even connect to the public internet? Only the intranet. For security reasons — “three networks, one database” (new terms: “one database” means database, “three networks” are xx net, yy net, and zz net). Fine, I won’t use it. I’ll work on my book translation and my own stuff. If I need the internet, I go to the city’s only internet cafe.

I chatted with colleagues for a while. There’s some language barrier — I can’t quite understand some local dialects. Need to practice more, hopefully returning to Shanghai with a northwest accent. I learned about the informatization situation here. The government website was only set up this year — quite late. The main work here is maintaining two websites, listed below:

Dingxi City People’s Government
http://www.dx.gansu.gov.cn/

China Potato Capital
http://www.potato8.com/

Interesting thing about the second one: search “China Potato Capital” on Google, and you’ll find two China Potato Capital websites. Another one is from Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia. I hereby solemnly declare that Inner Mongolia’s potato website is “brand-riding” — who knows if they might “disappear” one day. No legal relationship with Gansu Dingxi.

At noon, I also studied some e-government knowledge for future忽悠.

I chatted with the technical staff. They’re very eager to pursue further training. This科室 has 7 people, none with a computer science bachelor’s degree. They encounter problems and wish they had guidance. They asked if Tongji has short-term computer training programs. I suddenly felt an urge to give them a lecture, introducing the characteristics of computer science as a field.

About life here: since this support mission doesn’t go down to the township level, it’s not as tough as imagined. At least there’s enough food and water. Meals are mainly potatoes — every meal has potatoes. High starch content. If I return to Shanghai fat, don’t assume I’ve been eating richly — it’s the starch… Showering is somewhat problematic — water resources aren’t abundant. But the weather isn’t hot, so I don’t sweat much.

Also, this area is a高原 — Google Maps says about 2000m elevation. The most obvious symptom: climbing to the 6th floor office, by the 4th floor I’m out of breath, heart rate jumps to 100+, with pre-dizziness. Need to stop and rest two minutes before continuing the remaining two floors. The first time I felt this, I thought I was old and decrepit. But I was running several kilometers without rest in Shanghai just days earlier — how could I decline so quickly? Then I figured it out: altitude. Altitude sickness. Looks like I won’t be visiting Tibet.

As for accommodation, it’s pretty cool: they gave me a two-bedroom, one-living-room apartment in the city government residential compound. For free. I’ve instantly become a “homeowner.” (Tongji University, take notes!) Living in the government compound gives me face — the security guards greet me in pure Dingxi accent when I go out, though not “May I help you.” If I tuck a black leather briefcase under my arm, wear a collared shirt tucked into my pants to accentuate a beer belly, and walk out slowly with hands behind my back, I’d look just like a grassroots Party cadre, local high society. The above is pure fantasy — conditions are actually tough. Besides a bed, there’s nothing. Drinking water is problematic, eating means street stalls, and showering is difficult.

Tomorrow is the weekend — feel like going to work overtime?