My colleague Darleen and her husband are both members of a Tianjin car club. All of the members are fans of a certain Japanese car brand which we do not have in Canada. The logo of this car is a “1” and all of the models I have seen so far are very similar. Each member of the car club has exactly the same model of car, the only differences between member cars are colours and side decals.
The members of the car club (numbering over 1000) are from all walks of life. For example, at the wedding mentioned in an earlier post, the MC for the event was a member of the car club. Also, Darleen and her husband were invited because they are members of the car club. Thus, club thus works as a good guanxi network as exhibited by the MC who gave the wedding party a special discount price! Online, members discuss good travel and tourism areas, great restaurants within Tianjin and they frequently plan get together events at restaurants, badminton courts and KTV parlours.
Most of the cars belonging to this club have two-way radio systems installed in the dashboard. This allows members to communicate easily between all member cars when they go on an outing together. Thus, to facilitate this system, all or most of the cars have a large antenna which is affixed to the hood of the car magnetically.
From my outings with Darleen, the car club is like an extended family where all members initially share the same interests in the same model of car. This interest unites the group
who find other similar interests together that go beyond the car. It seems like a lot of good friendships have blossomed out of the appreciation for cars. Thankfully, big SUVs are not as popular in China as they are back home. I have seen three hummers so far, and other big hunks. On the bright side, I’ve seen at least 3 Toyota Prius’ zipping around. Now, I just need to find the car club for Toyota Prius’!
4 comments:
My name is Hyeji Jin and I am a summer intern working at OhmyNews International (http://english.ohmynews.com/).
OhmyNews(http://www.ohmynews.com) is the premier online citizen journalism site in Korea and we are sending our citizen reporters to cover the Olympic Games in Beijing.
It would be great if you and your community can participate in our efforts to learn more about the Beijing Games. We would appreciate any information and advice you have.
We welcome you to participate the OhmyNews community and share your ideas and issues about the Games. You can write about sporting or non-sporting topics. You can post articles, blogposts, microblog, put up photos and even send videos.
Becoming a Citizen Reporter at OhmyNews is not too difficult, you just need to register on the website:
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You can compose your article online and send them to the editor. 20,000 Korean Won (~$20) would be granted if an article is posted up on the main page.
If you are interested please contact me at ohmynewsolympics@gmail.com.
Thank you very much.
Hey thanks for the post! Though I'm pretty tied up now with work and travel, I hope that you get some replies from posting on this site.
Thanks for getting back to me!
Hope you can help us in your spare time. Just what issues concerning the Beijing Olympics might be essential for us to cover. Or even your overall opinion on how well you think Beijing is handling with the issues.
Thank you so much!
Hyeji
This is a great post
thanks for sharing with all of us
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