China Charlie is now

                                      "The World as seen by Charlie"

Previous installments of "China Charlie" and "The Jetage Bum" are on our archive page (click on "To our Archives" below).       

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            What happened to “China Charlie”??? ? ?  ?

            After a couple of years of writing weekly “China Charlie’s” for two websites, I’ll admit it, I sorta burned out. Along with that, China has made enough improvements that it was getting more difficult to find material to comment on (or I wasn’t seeing it anymore).

            Anyway, Charlie’s back, but in a slightly different format

I’ve “left” the “Middle Kinkdom” but am still living and traveling in Southeast Asia, which should help to explain the name change

            Rather than restrict my dissertations on life “on the streets” in one country, I’ll be sharing stories from my bumming around the world both current and for the past several decades, and also stories of some of the characters that I’ve met along the way(and their antics). In any of these stories, as in the past, I’ll avoid using real names to prevent any unnecessary “pointing and snickering” (or “did you really do that” questions from acquaintances)..

With all of that out of the way, welcome to the new “The world as seen by Charlie”

Trading Company Days

 The cure for transportation delays

            When I worked for a Trading Company as the head of QC in China in the early 90’s, we used contract Taxis for transportation to and from, the factories.

            This meant that we had the same drivers, and we got familiar with them and their habits. One of the things that they were expected to do was to start the cars and get the air conditioners started before we were ready to leave. They were good about getting the cars cooled off , but they also had the habit of getting all the “gwailohs” (foreigners) in the cars, and then getting together with the other drivers for a smoke and last minute chat before we would leave.

            One morning there were 2 other guys that were going with me, and after we got in the pre-cooled car, the driver got out to talk to his buddies. Having this happen every morning was starting to aggravate me, and I mentioned it to the guys. As the cars was idling with the air conditioner running, one of the guys suggested that we lock the doors, which we did.

When the driver was through with his cigarette and the last minute gossip, he came back and pulled the door handle, expecting to be able to get in.

Two things happened.

First he got a shocked look on his face, followed by disbelief that we had locked him out.

The second thing was that his buddies saw what was happening and started to laugh at him, costing him “face”.

We unlocked the door and let him in after he tried the door handle a couple of times. After he got in, he was grumbling in Chinese (something about “gwailohs”), and we drove away.

From then on, when we got in the cars to leave, we didn’t have to wait for the drivers didn’t have to have their “smoke” before we left. 

Where’s my Chair?

As the head of QC for the Trading Company, I had an office (that I didn’t use much) and a secretary. The office had  the normal furnishings (desk phone, etc.), including a high backed, swiveling, upholstered leather chair

When I was “in town” my usual routine was to go into the office in the morning, check any communications, and then go to the factories.

One morning I went to the office to check on things before heading out to the factories, and found that my high backed leather chair had been replaced by a straight backed wooden chair. On asking what happened to my chair, I was informed that a new guy had started and they had given him my chair, and the wooden one was mine.

The manager of the operation in China was a Taiwanese gentleman, and he was out of town for a couple of days. His office had a much nicer chair than had disappeared from my office.

I went back to my office, took the wooden straight backed chair and headed for the manager’s office. There were a lot of shocked looks and warnings (“you can’t do that, that’s the manager’s chair”) as I replaced the manager’s chair with the wooden chair and wheeled his chair back to my office.

A couple of days later the manager returned, but I didn’t hear anything, except that he did get a new chair.

Latter that day, I stuck my head in his office, welcomed him back and complimented him on his new chair. All he did was to say thanks and grin. I never heard anything about his missing chair

‘til next time, ya’ll have a rice day