(ˈhips•tər)
noun informal

One who takes offense at being called a “hipster.”

Is this:

Once a week I will wear a tie

So for those of you just joining in, this is my second week as Senior Web Architect (hey look at the guy with the job title) at Ports, a major international clothier. Ports produces the single most successful clothing brand for the Chinese market (Port International) which is why you’ve probably never heard of it. There are a great many things (like Xu Jinglei) that are phenomenally popular with literally a billion people but about which everyone outside China is blissfully unaware. We also have a tres chichi red-carpet brand called Ports 1961.

The problem with working with people who jet off to New York for Mercedes Fashion Week is that I dress like someone who hops boxcars to Aberdeen for the Loggers’ Carnival. There is a certain bar for stylish workwear at this office and I am way, way below it.

Compounding my problem is that I completely failed to anticipate the Xiamen climate. When we decided to move Xiamen last year, I looked a globe and saw that Xiamen is at the same latitude as Cuba and figured, “hey, now I can sell all my sweaters.” Suffice to say, this was a Bad Decision. Right now it’s about 12C (54°F) here in Xiamen, where the buildings have neither insulation or central heat and I own exactly one sweater. Which isn’t even very warm. So I can’t do what unstylish people in cool climates do, which is put on a nice sweater (because everyone looks better in a nice sweater?).

Thus the new dress code. I figure if once a week I wear a tie (even if, like today, I’m wearing it with brown jeans and my retro digital watch), people might remember me as “the guy who wears a tie.” (Despite their stylishness, my coworkers indeed seldom wear ties). This way I can spend the other four days wearing hoodies and Chuck Taylors. It’s like Casual Day, but in reverse.

Today is my fourth day at my new job as [Senior Web Architect | Senior E-Business Manager | Director of Web Services] at Ports, an international clothing company based in Xiamen. I think I’ve had one job in my post–grad school life where, on the first day at work, someone knew exactly what I’d be working on that day. That job was my first Designer position at Headbone Interactive. As that was my first design job, however, I had no idea how to do the things I was being asked to do. Like use Illustrator or code CSS, for example. My boss recognized I had raw talent and gave me the structure I needed to develop it. Here, I have the opposite problem: I know how to use all the tools but don’t have a very clear idea to what end I’m using them. I guess this is a usual work trajectory in the New Global PostModern World™, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have no idea what to do at my new job where everyone speaks Chinese.

Most of my adult-type jobs have started like this one. On my first day, no one quite knows what to do with me (or what my job title is). I don’t know who will provide me with direction, and no one knows exactly what my actual product is. This job is probably the first I’ve had where I didn’t even start with a job title, however. So I’ll be spending the next few days (weeks? Ugh) figuring out what the hell I’m supposed to do. Also: I manage (drumroll) a Chinese staff, which is doubly challenging: one, because I don’t care to manage people, and two, because managing Chinese workers requires more intense management (of the unpleasant “get back to work” and “here’s exactly what you have to do” and “what the hell are you doing?” variety).

The Ports office is in Jimei, a close suburb of Xiamen. The Chinese reckon their cities differently that Americans, however, so Jimei is actually part of the city of Xiamen (as is, in fact, a large swath of farmland and hill territory.) This would be a little like saying “Portland, Oregon” stretches from the falls of the Willamette to the Columbia river, and from the foothills of Mt. Hood to the Coast Range. Think about this next time you hear that Shanghai has 30 million people; by the way the Chinese reckon city size, Portland has 2 million.

Anyway, Jimei is an improvement over Xinglin (the suburb where the school was located) in a couple of key ways. First, it has a nice-ish college, which lends a little bit of sophistication to the town. Second, it’s about 20 minutes closer to downtown Xiamen (where we live). And third, the Ports office is in “downtown” Jimei, handy to restaurants and shops, and whatnot. Contrast with XIS, which was on the outer edge of Xinglin, surrounded by farms and factories.

Some other advantages of working for a company, not an educational monopoly:

• Free Chinese lunch every day
• Daily contact with actual working Chinese people (whose working conditions, BTW, are a little better than American Apparel might lead you to believe, but let’s not kid ourselves, I’m now working for a Chinese clothing factory)
• A workplace where incompetence is punished and quality rewarded

But the real downside to working at a fashion comapny is that I have no clothes. For example I have exactly two pairs of work-appropriate (read: leather) shoes. The people who work in the office here (Chinese and foreigners alike) are all really nappy. I look like what I am, an unstylish hippie. So I’m gonna have to spend more money and time doing my least favorite thing: buying clothes.

I kind of wonder what the clothesy people I know Back Home (you know who you are) would think of my new job.

p.s. Here are the websites I’m working on:

• Ports Design (the corporate website)
• Ports International (the China-only label [despite the “international” name])
• Ports 1961 (the designer International label)
• Printemps China (a Chinese mall owned by Ports; you might not be able to see this website outside China)

I’ve been clothes shopping lately, trying to fill my wardrobe with school-appropriate clothes. Before we left Portland I thought myself to be “about the size of the average Chinese man.” After shopping for clothes I can say this is about half right. I am as tall as the average Chinese man and only a little heavier, but I wear my weight in very different places.

In the States, I usualy wear size M clothes...and as Americans get bigger I am more frequently wearing size S. Well in China I will apparently be wearing size XL...and even that size fits funny. Chinese men have no thighs, butts, chests or shoulders. My new size XL pants are loose through the waist but I have to wear them below my hips, or they’re too tight through the seat and thigh. My new shirts are painted across my back and chest, but boxy across my gut. I guess Chinese men have physiques like soda straws.

On the other hand, I’ve bought two pair of pants and two shirts for about 300 RMB (about US$38). I can forgive a lot of sins in a pair of $10 pants.