Not your average RoadID.

I completely understand.  

Very cool.  Didn't occur to me they would make it in Chinese.  

How long are you staying in Beijing?

Yay!  My co-irker didn't play a trick on me during translation! ;^)

I'll be there for 3 years. 

They told my wife: "Any characters you can get to show up in a Word document, we can print on a bracelet." I thought about getting one in Wingdings.

Congrats on your move.  We are finishing a 2 year rotation in Hong Kong.  I'm not sure of your history with China or doing a living abroad (so you may already know this) but it will be the most rewarding and challenging 3 years of your and your families life.  

It's been a huge adventure for us but also we are glad that we are at the end and headed back to US soil.  

Where are you headed?  There is another BTer from Atlanta who lives in Shanghai.  

We'll be living in Beijing.  Our history with China is that we adopted our daughter in 2007 from Chongqing.   My company started a China Technical Exchange Program in order to establish a tech hub in Beijing/Wuhan.... I applied and here I am!  

Beijing and Hong Kong are very different, with HK closer to the "Western" life style you may be more familiar, and HK being more "foreign-friendly" with bi-lingual signs everywhere. 

Only been to Beijing once, for a few days, as a tourist.  The history is immense. 

Ryan: I hope you have plans to visit other places in China.  And don't just go to other cities.  Chinese people are trying to build replicates of NYC and London (in Beijing, the street of Wangfujing is just like a 5th Ave, with Louis Vuitton, Gap, Starbucks, Burger King and Haagen Daz).  Go to the other provinces and take a hike on one of those fold mountains. 

Jonathan: I may have run into you when I was in HK during Christmas...

That's awesome.

I am virtually guaranteed at least one trip to Wuhan while I'm there.  Our visiting plans already include:

Chongqing (Liang Ping) to show Stella where she came from

Xi'an to see the soldiers

Various spots of the "old" wall that are not tourist traps.

I'm sure we'll find more as we're there longer.  If you can read the RoadID, you'll see that we're staying at the Park Avenue apartments.  This is still mostly westernized living... the distribution of occupants is about 50/50 Chinese/Expat.  We are just inside the 4th ring road and adjacent to 2 parks. We can actually walk across HongLing Jin Park and get to the kids school (YCIS) without crossing any traffic if we want to.   Of course, they're really excited about being able to ride the bus to school.

Our family blog is http://beinginbeijing.wordpress.com if you would like to see what we're up to.  We're in the middle of sorting/packing/storing our stuff right now.

Pretty cool blog.  Interesting.  

You guys still trying to come up with Chinese names?  I may be able to help...

Thanks!  No,  I'm just letting them come up with one for me on the work permit application.  They gave me a "phonetic" one at work a couple of years ago:  Rui An Fan de wo te.   I think I have the characters around here somewhere.

OMG  This is what I came up with, at least the same spelling.  

Too bad BT doesn't support Chinese Character display. 

I am soooooo jealous.  I would love to live abroad with our kids.  My husband has had numerous opportunities to move abroad with our family but he isn't interested.  One of our sons has a fairly complicated medical condition and he is worried we won't be able to find the proper medical care abroad.  Anywa, good luck to you and your family.  It sounds like a great adventure!

The 2 western hospitals in Beijing are very good.  My wife has MS and my son was just diagnosed with Asthma.  I am not interested in living abroad either... but my wife was obsessed with China.  So here we go!

I was doing the pinyin from memory, not too bad. If I can find my nametag I'll scan it.

finally found my nametag!

(name in chinese.jpg)

What do you do for Cummins?

The given name (first 2 characters) is exactly what I thought of. 

As for family name, you know how most Chinese people have 1 character for that?  I was to use a character that is a real family name. 

In romanized pinyin, it would be "Fan Rui-an"

Edit to add:  now this sounds like a real Chinese guy's name

(Name.jpg)

Engine software calibration, currently.  In 2 weeks, engine software development, calibration, and anything else they can think of to have me do.    Actually, I manage teams of people that do these things. I do very little of them anymore.   The first few months in China will probably be a lot more hands on until  I get my team up and running over there.

Awesome.  Thanks DK, I will see if my coworkers over there can train me to answer to that!