What 200 RMB Can Buy You in Suzhou
May 27th, 2008 | by This is China! |Last week I chipped in two hundred RMB for a birthday gift for an expat in Suzhou, Jeff, a British fellow who’s lived in the city for about 10 years. The idea was for a bunch of us that live in Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) – to the east of the old city – and for those that live to the west of the old city, in Suzhou New District (SND), to contribute to a pot that would be enough to throw a birthday bash and buy Jeff an iPhone, long coveted by Jeff’s six year old son, Joey. Nearly fifty people attended the birthday bash at Blue Marlin II, in SND (We BMIII guys in SIP decided to cross town since Jeff lives in SND and frequents the BM in the New District). Jeff’s factory out in SND was one of about a dozen whose roofs had collapsed from the heavy snows this past winter. Jeff told me at the birthday party that he had almost gotten the operation back to the level it had been when the blizzard of 2008 had hit.
Free flow beers, a delicious cake, and, most of all, a chance to hook up with expats from around the world whom many of us had not seen in months – if not years – kept the mid-day festivities in high spirits.
When Jeff finally received his new iPhone and was offered help by some of the other happy owners of the must-have gadget he said simply, “Naw, I’ll just give it to Joey to set up in the morning.” So many people had contributed to the birthday pot and so much money was left over that Jeff’s mates also bought him a very cool, black-matte mountain bike made by Giant.
Safely home by six o’clock in the evening, admittedly a bit pickled, I considered how precious it was that mates could be continue to be mates – through the dark times and the happy.
It’s great to be Suzhounese.
