Lemon Crème Cookie Syndrome

Yet another long one...

When I was in Beijing in May I met with a couple friends of mine who had been in the country for a while and were leaving in June. One of them said to me, "I hate everyone in this country right now, even you."

I laughed at the time, but now I really know where he's coming from.

In my last post I had a link to the amazon page with Jung Chang's new book. At the bottom it has the customer reviews. There are a lot of them. Probably as many as every other book on China Amazon has to offer. Very opinionated and windy. These are the people I have to deal with.

They are commonly referred to as the 'China Nerd'. I've resorted to calling them 'China Losers'. I probably have to include myself in this group, although people who have been here longer and put more into China would guffaw at my Chinese skills and limited research into the country. I may be labeled as a 'China Wannabe'. Really, all I want is to be a nothing at all China. Maybe a china vet.

Anyway, that's not everyone in China, just the group of scholars who put forth a lot of effort and stay here the longest. I think I mentioned in an earlier blog that these are mostly egotistical males.

So, I'll try to give a break down of the different groups of expats that come to the PRC.
1. Students
2. 20 Somethings
3. Accomplished Business Execs
4. Etc.

1. Students come here for a semester or a year or to study in a Chinese university. Sometimes I think they're permanently stuck in Stage 3. They are. They speak a lot of Chinglish. They can see why China is annoying but since they're students they feel this doesn't include them. As typical undergrads they all think that when they graduate they can return to China and get the kick ass job and master the economy and the language and everything about it. They normally stick to their own little student group. You see them out at bars, but they only talk to each other. I used to hang out with some students. It was painful for a number of reasons but they returned home to graduate.
I friend of mine the other day made the accurate comment of, "I can't even talk to undergrads anymore. I just have to walk away." It's true. You're all delusional. I used to be one, I know.

2. 20-Somethings can be broken into sub-categories.
a. English Teachers
b. Non-English Teachers
c. People with good jobs
d. Post-graduates

a. I think English teachers can further be broken down into 2 more categories: Those that come over just to teach and those that teach while looking for 'something better'.
I'm probably in the second category. I did come over here to teach, but with the intention of finding 'something better.' And I did, I'm going to leave the country.
Ok, so the ones that come over here to teach come because they heard that China was interesting. They like Chinese food. Fengshui and all seem kind of fun and trendy. They either get here and hate and go home after their year, or stay and move into the 'looking for something better' group.
The group that is 'looking for something better' teach because it makes good money and you work very few hours. This way you can live in China comfortably while having a lot of free time to pursue your other interests. 'Something better' could be anything. The best option is a job in a foreign firm getting paid in foreign money, but that rarely happens to people who are looking for a job from inside China. What most likely comes up is a sales, design, or marketing position which brings me to
b. Non-English Teachers. These people make as much as the English teachers if not less. They are usually in graphic and web design, sales, or some kind of random marketing position. They don't get paid very well and work long hours but are 'better' than English teachers b/c they aren't teaching English. Teaching English in China is the expat equivalent to waitressing. Something that anyone can do and you try not to mention. I've actually only been a waitress once and I was fired. Supposedly I had an 'attitude'.
c. 20-somethings with good jobs. These people are very lucky. They make Western wages and work in foreign firms. They have really good jobs in advertising or consulting or something along those lines. They work long hours and travel a lot. They're here for the long haul b/c when they're not working, they live like royalty. The only real problem they have to face is that they're still in China. ha. But that doesn't matter because they're rich and save everything they earn and live well. Most of these people get their jobs from abroad and are brought into China. A special few get hired in China. Very, very lucky.
d. Postgrads. They come over to do research. They're on research grants so live well. Kind of like c, but still with the poor student attitude. They're straight on the course for writing an Amazon book review.

A few notes about the 20-somethings in general. We're all pretty well educated and well traveled. Everyone has at least a bachelor’s degree, usually from a good school. We all had a lot of potential at one point. Those in c still do. Those in a and b are looking for a way to bring back the glory days. There are a lot of us and we continue to grow in number. I'm currently reviewing resumes for a replacement for myself when I leave. It's actually pretty depressing going over 60 resumes that are all exactly like your own.

3. Accomplished Business Executives
The older group c. They come over with their families if they have them. They live in ridiculous apartments, have drivers, eat at the nicest restaurants, and very rarely see anything of 'real' China. They stay a couple years and move on. Always brought over from abroad on some amazing package. Pay for nothing and save every penny of their 6-figure salary.
The jokes on you. Your kids are all going to grow up fucked up in American school.
There are also many of these people. I rarely run into them though b/c only the dirty old men hit up the bars. Most of them have their divers take them home to their families every night.

4. Etc.
So these people are usually older. The come over to China to try and relive some of the hippie days or to get married, or to just try to have an experience. They either don't know Chinese at all and don't plan on learning because they're 'too old for that stuff' or they have studied a little. A lot of them teach. Some write. Some just bum around on their savings.
I met a 50 something New Zealand women on a bus in Guilin. She was the only foreigner teaching in a small town. Didn't know a word of Chinese. She spent a lot of time knitting.
Another women I taught a class with once. She was from Germany and had been over here about a year and a half. She knew minimal Chinese. Anyway, we were on the bus going home and talking about China. Her comment was, "I think the Chinese can be a bit.... strange sometimes." I kind of smiled and replied, "Yeah, they're probably the hardest part about living here."

This brings me to the different types of ‘China Snobs’. Somebody else wrote a good blog about this that can be found here. I don't think I’m any of the 4 main snobs he pointed out. But if you read the comments I'm probably an "I'm over China snob” or a “I feel like I’ve put enough time and effort into China to really know what this country is all about and the rest of you are all kidding yourselves snob”. But I’m kind of that way about everything.

So anyway, that's probably a rough generalization of foreigners in China. I haven't spoken much about ABC's (American Born Chinese). They're mostly in the 20-something group and come over here because it's their 'roots' and all. Really it should be FBC (Foreign Born Chinese) but for some reason the Americans stick out the most and are more adamant about being 'in China'.

Another thing I've noticed. Unless you're a FBC, most of the foreigners here are not from cities with established Chinatowns. And really, that makes a lot of sense.

So why Lemon Crème Cookie syndrome? Well for people who are 'white on the outside, yellow on the inside' the usual saying is an inside-out twinkie or an egg. I think both are those are lame. I've always liked the name Oreo Cookie Syndrome, so I guess I'm stealing from the black people.

On a final note, I really do like a lot of people in China. Most of my good friends have some connection to China and I generally get along with most of the people here. We're all just a farce of ourselves.

This blog has gone on way too long.

哈哈哈

So I'm currently reading this new book about Mao. It's by Jung Chang entitled Mao: The Unknown Story. It's banned in China, but I had it smuggled in. Of course it's very biased but it's pretty good and has a lot of stuff I didn't know before.

Anyway, I'm just finishing up reading about the long march but I peeked forward to Stalin's death. They hung a huge portrait of Stalin in Tiananmen Square when he died with a lot of big red banners. The people who came to mourn had to abide by a series of laws. One of which was 'don't laugh'.

This probably wouldn't be needed anywhere else in the world. I do realize this was during a repressive time under a terrible dictator, but I feel like that didn't matter.

On my bus there's a marquee that scrolls across telling people to board the bus in an orderly fashion (never happens), sit quietly (yet again, never), respect fellow passengers (nope), and abide by the 'seven no's'.

It took me about four months to look up what the 'seven no's' are, but apparently there rules that Shanghai has thought up and are as follows:
1. No spitting
2. No jaywalking
3. No swearing
4. No littering
5. No smoking in public
6. No walking on the grass
7. No destruction of public property

So...
for 1. I was spit on writing this blog.
2. I don't think there are any crosswalks in Shanghai, the only way to get across the street is jaywalk.
3. I'd like to see anyone attempt to step foot outside and not swear.
4. If there weren't 24 hour street cleaners this city would be half a mile above sea level on a pile of trash. (I'm not kidding, there are 24 hour street cleaners and it still looks like shit.)
5. hahahahahahahaha
6. This one is probably the easiest to abide by because there is no grass in Shanghai
7. I think 5000 buildings are knocked down each day here. I had trees outside my apartment complex. I woke up one morning and they'd cut off all the branches and moved them all five feet in. So now I have a bunch of stubs lining my street. I still don't know what the move was for.

but at least we can laugh. I guess...

crashing to the ground

As part of my never ending quest to prove that China is doomed to fail...

Of course, walking or driving the streets of Beijing or Shanghai, one gets the impression of a hustling, bustling economy in full flight, as evidenced by construction and crowded streets and stores, combined with western-style traffic jams. Nevertheless, China is not without serious problems, which it must address if it is to sustain growth rates of 9% per year. The reality is that the country is advancing at different paces in different regions, and the wealth gaps are widening.

Of course if I'm right the rest of the world will get fucked as well...
but life's a series of peaks and valleys.

exit stage right

This is a rather long blog, so I apologize in advance.

It is generally agreed that there are five stages one goes through after arriving in China. These vary on how long you stay for and how much studying/interest you showed in the country before arriving, but the roughly break down as such:

The first stage is the initial excitement upon entering a new country. Little things like seeing neon characters everywhere and people cooking barbeque on the street corner are exciting and fresh and new.

Stage two is an overall disgust for the country. Depending on your personality, the time from stage one to stage two can be between 10 minutes and a week. Underneath the neon characters, people are spitting, yelling, the food smells, the street smells, children are running around without pants on and people are laughing at them.

In stage three, one attempts to understand the culture. They shake off the disgust as unfamiliarity and jet lag and begin to really dive into the oldest civilization in the world. This stage produces the most annoying individuals by far. These people focus hard on learning the language. They wake up early and go to the parks to learn Tai Chi. They only talk to Chinese people. They drink baijiu and refuse to eat any food that isn't Chinese. Fengshui is deep. They start naming calligraphy as a hobby and introduce themselves by their Chinese names. They don't talk to any foreigners who aren't also in stage three. Stage three lasts between 1-12months, also depending on the individual.

Stage four is the realization that your initial assessment in stage two was correct. The country is just loud, annoying, and dirty. People shit in the street and spit on each other. They eat dogs for fun. This isn't a particular cultural aspect to be learned, they really are evil. The Chinese are actually that mean to each other. There is no deep meaning and the oldest civilization has only lasted so long because nobody else would actually want to put up with conquering these people.

You drink a lot in stage four. All your friends are in stage two, four or five (which I'll get to). You hate everyone in stage three more than the Chinese. You desperately try to convert stage two people to skipping stage three. You sleep a lot. You lose interest in things you used to enjoy. Most other places in the world refer to this as 'depression', but here in China we just call it stage four. I think most of this blog took place in stage four. Stage four lasts until you realize you're leaving the country. This could be up to 10 years for some people. I think some people never leave stage four. The glorious depressed I guess.

When I go out at night I run into people in stage four all the time. They're hunched over a drink at the bar, staring into nothing. If you go up and ask them how they are, they shrug. When you ask what the matter is, the response is, "I don't know, I'm just bored. You know?" I usually just pat them on the back and tell them it will be okay. We all hope so at least.

Stage five comes with the realization that you're leaving China. Like a great weight has been lifted off your shoulders. You also drink a lot in stage five, but it's more celebratory than 'drowning your sorrows' kind of drink. A renewed interest for China emerges and you start going out to 'cultural' events and traveling again. Not like the stage three people, this time you have a good sense of sarcasm with you and realize it's all bullshit and just a good opportunity to try out new bars. China's still a shithole, but you don't care because you're leaving. I've heard it compared to 'Senior Stretch'.

I am currently in stage five. Thank God. I still lapse into stage four clearly, but for the most part I'm just counting down the days. Of course in any of these stages, one is prone to lapse into a lower stage.

Stage five is dangerous because with all the celebrating you begin to mistaken these good times as China is a great place and then after you return, you remember this time and think it may be okay to come back. This is why later in life you find yourself getting off a plane in China and wondering, "What the hell am I doing back here?"

Seeing as this is only my second 'real' time in China, I'm not sure if you go through all the stages each time you return. I think you do, but they just go by faster. Like, I'm pretty sure I went through stage 1-3 in about 2 and a half weeks this time. I really don't want to think about next time. And there will be one.

Of course, once you leave China there are another five stages.

The first is an overwhelming feeling of relief and joy immediately upon entering the plane. This is amplified when a foreign(!) stewardess tells the Chinese in the back of the plane they have to be quiet and they sit there stunned.

The second stage is mostly just a strong craving for Chinese food.

The third is an annoyance with anyone who tries to talk about China with some kind of knowledge and hasn't been here. Even if it's negative, you don't want to hear it. Unless you've done it, you can't possibly understand. And the fact that you (the individual who was in China) care what people have to say on the topic pisses you off the most.

The fourth stage is a rejection of having any connection with China at all. You no longer talk about it in conversation and you fail to bring up that you've spent a substantial amount of time there. The only real indicator that you may know something about the middle kingdom is a strong insistence in Chinese restaurants.

I remember when I was living in Sydney one of my good friends came over to my house. We'd known each other for about four months. She was in my room and noticed my Chinese-English dictionary on my bookshelf.
"You speak Chinese?"
"Oh, um, yeah, I lived there for a semester in college, and I'll probably be there next year."
She looked at me as though seeing a complete stranger.

Although you attempt to reject any connection to China, it still creeps up in different ways. Like you find yourself in Chinatown on various occasions and you try to conspicuously click 'Asia-Pacific' on every news webpage. For example, for the past four years a Chinese person has cut my hair. For some reason, I feel the need to go to Chinatown every time I need a trim. I also always tend to have frozen dumplings in my fridge, no matter where I am in the world.

Stage five is the realization that you're going to have to go back to China. It's gnawed at you, it's taunted you and now you have to return. You've been reading articles about the country for too long. Your Chinese has fallen apart. Your dreams are amazingly clear without the MSG. It's the sad acceptance of the inevitable that you don't want to happen.

One day I hope to never hit stage five. I think this may be pretty likely, since most of the people who continue to return to China throughout there life are egotistical males, I may be okay. I only fit half that definition.

This leads me to the type of people who find themselves in China. I was going to get to that in this blog, but it may have to wait. It's pretty basic - we all think we're better than anyone else - but I may want to get into some particularities.

pro lifer?

Bush's new nomination for the Supreme Court?

heilongjiang

So I was having an argument last night on why I don't think China will be the next superpower, when I ran across this today:

China confirms "major" pollution of river

I wish they would have specified which river in the title, because I read that and instantly considered myself walking dead. Luckily for me, Harbin is a couple thousand miles away. But that doesn't matter, because it could have (and still may) happened to the Yangtze or the Yellow River or outside of Hong Kong. In which case the damage would be enormous. Beyond anything imaginable in the west. New Orleans would have nothing on a fuck up in Shanghai. Clearly, China has too many domestic problems to become the new hegemon.

I actually used to live in Harbin for about a month. Although it has 9 million people, it's still a small city. Kind of like Minneapolis. People are nicer there, they speak clearly, and the food is terrible. It's a pretty dull town. Nice Russian architecture. It only has two 'night clubs'. I realize that the number of night clubs doesn't determine how fun a place is, but when you're stuck in a small town, south of Siberia you become pretty dependent on it. Anyway, overall it's a pretty cute place. They have an ice festival in the winter. They also host the International Ski Conference. I helped put that together actually when I worked for the UN Industrial Development Organization. Obviously the UN knows where development is needed most in China - the ski slopes. This way the Chinese who are finally rich enough to ski, now have decent facilities to do so. I actually know some people in Harbin (well if I ever emailed them I would), I hope they're ok.

PT-141

I just read about the new sex drug.

It is non-addictive, easy to use, has no serious physical side effects.

If this drug does what it says it does, there is no way it is 'non-addictive'. Fuck, I read the article 4 times on the prospect of a hit.

The article in New York Magazine is pretty good.

水

Wow, bushie can ride a bike. Try it out on the streets of Beijing next time.

All I have to say is, Thank god he has that water bottle.

So anyway, I went to the gym the morning, but I forgot my water bottle. This normally isn't a problem because I can buy water there. So I went to the little cafe where I usually buy water but nobody was there. So I went and asked this girl who worked a the gym if I could buy water. She was watching TV on a big screen TV and told me I'd have to wait for the attendant. So I sat down and waited about 5 minutes. I got kind of annoyed, so I went and asked a guy at the main desk if I could get some water. He told me that it wouldn't open for another hour.

It's fucking gym. They'd been open for 5 hours already. If nothing else, they should have water available.. The guy told me I could drink from the tap. I got annoyed and went and sat in the steam room for longer than I should have considering I had no water. I didn't end up working out.

1680

Look how puny and sad Shanghai was. Just like Santa Fe.

Actually, according to this map, the only place that hasn't changed in the past 325 years in Manila.

not bad

Blunt, but he's got a point.
Originally uploaded by Tetsuo1.

this guy has clearly tried to get a cab here.

the dam

I've recently installed Google Analytics on my blog so I can spy on everyone who visits, but so far it's produced no data. This leads me to the only conclusion possible - that nobody is actually reading my blog. That's okay, I'll still keep typing away to myself.

I'm waiting for my brother to return from Yangshuo. He's been in China almost two weeks now. He was up in BJ for a couple days and was down here for a week before I told him he should probably leave and see another bit of China. It's easy to get wrapped up in the eating/drinking/lazy life of Shanghai for a week or, hmmmm 6 months or so.

Anyway, if he's smarter than me he won't return. I've only received one text message from him since he got there, "This place is like Chinese Amsterdam." I'm not so sure I'd call it an Amsterdam. It's a much smaller town, and the electronic music scene is nowhere close to what is produced in The Netherlands.

I've discovered what pisses me off about places that are normally hot or warm getting cold. This happened in Sydney as well. Like, it's definitely cold right now, but it has none of the usual cold indicators. For example, I can't see my breath. Since I grew up in a place where we had to scrape ice off our car windows and wake up early to shovel snow so we could get to school on time (I actually never woke up early, I opted on being late and blaming the snow instead), I feel like I really shouldn't complain. But I'm still damn cold. Of course, I'm not wearing a sweater or anything heavy right now, so I guess I can't really complain, but Shanghai should be warm.

Okay, I'm just killing time online now. I would go watch a DVD, but I've seen every DVD made by man, and even some that aren't supposed to be made. Actually, most of them were never supposed to be made. Thanks to ridiculously cheap, pirated DVDs, I've had access to an array of shows. Even the deaf/mute couple at the end of the ally were burning DVDs and VCDs while I sat there. I don't even like movies. I'm not restricted to just movies though. I've also seen every television show made in the past 5 years. The TV shows are actually more dangerous. Because it doesn't take up just an hour of your time. You sit down to watch one, and twelve hours later you're still watching the first series.

Whatever, I'll figure out something to do.

kfc

my home sweet home

Just some highlights from the Economist article The Meaning of America.



...Every year since 1986, near Millsboro, the Punkin Chunkin has been held. Last week, 100 teams vied to see whose machine could toss an 8-10lb (3.6-4.6kg) pumpkin farthest. There were various categories: air cannons, trebuchets, pedal-powered doohickeys. No explosives are allowed—a galling rule to some contestants. But the biggest air cannons, with barrels up to 150 feet (46 metres) long, can shoot their fruit projectiles most of a mile, making each one what one spectator called “one heck of a peashooter”.

Need one spell out that virtually all the competitors are male? ....

It is not just that men like shooting things. Many of them also like fiddling with big gadgets. And the Punkin Chunkin shows what can be achieved when hundreds of mechanically adept minds focus on one utterly pointless objective...

After each pumpkin lands, eager men on quad bikes zoom around looking for the crater and then start triangulating.

All in all, Punkin Chunkin is a symbol of what makes America great. Only in the richest country on earth could regular guys spend tens of thousands of dollars building a pumpkin gun. Only in a nation with such a fine tradition of inventiveness, not to mention martial prowess, would so many choose to. And only in a land of wide open spaces would they be able to practise their chunkin without killing their neighbours. Alas, the 285-acre cornfield where Punkin Chunkin has been held for the past 20 years is soon to be sold and developed. But the chunkers will probably move to Maryland.

grinning idiot

It's getting cold in Shanghai now. I actually have to wear my coat when I go outside. I would say it came out of nowhere, but I guess it is the middle of November.

For some reason there are printing/photo shops every five feet in China. Probably just as an excuse to cut down trees but I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, I needed some passport photos for various reasons so I had to stop in one today.

I figured I'd just go out to one on the main street where I catch my bus, but as I was walking to the Kodak store I saw a little red sign in Chinese advertising passport photos. The main street where I catch my bus is lined with name brand clothing, cosmetic, and other retail stores. Across the street from the first Sephora in China a sign was propped up against a little ally way about as wide as a door.

I figured it had to be cheaper than the Kodak store so I started walking down this narrow, otherwise unmarked ally. About 50 feet in it came to a 'T' with just another small written sign and an arrow pointing to the right. I took a right and continued to walk in behind the storage rooms of the stores on the main street to a door that had another arrow. I walked up a couple flights of wooden stairs that were falling apart and had cracks on the walls.

Now, since I've grown up watching scary movies and the news, part me was on guard and expecting to be robbed, raped, and/or murdered at the end of this journey. Fortunately, at the top of the stairs was just a small 10'x10' room with three computers, numerous different types of hardware, a copy machine, and a blank wall for passport photos.

Out popped a small Chinese couple sucking on popsicles. Like most Chinese when they see a foreigner, they started grunting and pointing. I told them in Chinese that they could speak Chinese to me, but then they pointed to their ears indicating they were deaf. I only felt like an asshole for about 5 seconds.

Not only were they deaf and mute, but after trying to negotiate a price with them over a piece of written paper I learned they were nearly blind too. And I thought I was going to be drugged and murdered.

Anyway, somehow they managed to take my picture straight and print it out okay. They wouldn't let me smile in the picture so I look like a serial killer. Every time I'd try to sneak in a grin last minute, they'd indicate I'd ruined the picture and take another one. Since I don't really sleep because of noise, light, and the fear of never waking up, I think I have permanent bags under my eyes so the 'America's Most Wanted' look really shows.

So anyway, there's my Shanghai 'charm' for the week. Take it whatever way you want.

Also, a month from today I leave China...

It's happening

Nicole Doing the Communism Thing.
Originally uploaded by Cybornut - Super Geek/Stud.

Who's with me?

giant balls

I just finished reading an article about the problems an overseas Chinese woman from Singapore who had returned to live in Shanghai as an expat was facing.

"I always thought I was Chinese.. until we moved to China."

Also, in a sad moment for animal activists, tobacco companies, and the circle of life in general, Ai Ai, a chimpanzee in a Shaanxi province zoo, has finally been able to quit smoking after 16 years. Where else but China could you get a nicotine-addicted chimps? Life's such a bitch here that even the animals have resorted to chain smoking.

Some tennis master's cup is taking place or has taken place in Shanghai. I don't care about sports at all, so I don't know. Anyway, as a result there are enormous yellow tennis balls all around the city. I'm not kidding. I think they're trying to be artistic. They've even dug up ground around them to make it look like they were hit hard enough to be planted into the ground. There are also a lot of tennis ball balloons floating around. I'll try to get a picture but my camera has been slightly fucked since its existence.

The Chinese like to ask what sports I play.
Badmitton?
No.
Tennis?
No.
Table tennis?
No. Basketball is ok, mostly I just run though.
Only running?
Yes, I don't like team sports.


They never understand that.

who's hungry

I came across some disturbing material the other day that isn't Chinese.

Man allegedly fantasised about eating girls

I told a friend about the article and further introduced me to the entire 'feeding on femmes fetish.' Which was actually pretty disturbing that he knew so much about it. I googled it for a bit and became increasingly disturbed and swore of googling fetishes ever again. I did come across a kind of funny parody site that was set up as a response to how woman are portrayed as meat in the media. Sort of a literal demonstration.

So anyway, if you ever think you're fucked up and a bit weird, just think of the people who are getting off on the prospect of eating you. Unless you are one of those people. Then you're probably just screwed, and I'm never ordering food with you again.

There's no real China news. I needed a haircut this weekend and I wanted a massage, and fortunately, a Chinese haircut combines both. It's sort of a cheap way to relax, or would be if they hairdressers didn't insist on speaking to me the entire time. My very skinny 'stylist' had long curly hair and a pubic-hair moustache. His pinky fingernail was about two inches long. He didn't use clips to hold up my hair but had 3 assistants around him that would hold it up for him. But he did an okay job, so I'm happy.

I've got some family coming into Shanghai tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

the end of the rope

I have the day off today so I'm at home right now. We ran out of water so I had to order some more and wait until he gets here. This is the equivalent of waiting for the cable guy in the US. I may be here all day.

It's not that we're posh and we feel the need to drink only from a water cooler, but the tap water here is undrinkable, so everyone has a water cooler. We could boil our own water - which I did in Lin'an - but that just sucks. So anyway, I'm stuck here waiting for the water boy. Who is actually probably going to be a 40 year old man with 50 jugs of water strapped to his bicycles.

Anyway, since I have so much time on my hands, I've decided to design some merchandise for MSGFX:



These are US$21,US$25, and US$23 respectfully. If you order in bulk I can give you a cheaper price. I'm not sure how they turn out because I can't afford one.

Here are the graphics, I can also put these on stickers, underwear, hats, sweatshirts, etc. Let me know if you're interested:


This is the basic logo on a powerbook and safari.


These characters mean 'small handed robot'.


The left side down means 'small handed robot'. The four across is an idiom that means 'people everywhere', literally 'man mountain, man sea'. The four down is another idiom meaning 'At the end of one's rope/resources'. The two on the right are the characters for Shanghai.

These can also be viewed on my flickr site MSG Merchandise Set.

I accept pay pal if you're interested. Please email me with any enquiries.

in a valley

I've been having a pretty shitty China day. Meaning that earlier today I was swearing of everything Chinese. The language, the people, the food, the culture, the entire country.

This started with a simple task of getting a new monthly time card for one of my teaching jobs. I arrived at the building and asked the secretary. She then called three other people over who made a phone call. The person was on the phone. So I waited for about 10 minutes. Finally she came out. I asked her. She told me I should have asked the receptionist. Who did she think called her?

Anyway, the entire time I was looking at the time cards which were in the box labeled 'timecards'. I wanted to just take one, but it has to be stamped with a red chop and apparently the Chinese are the only people that can do this.

I turned to leave but couldn't walk out the door for another 5 minutes because some workmen were removing the door from its frame for some reason.

I've developed a patience for events like this, but today I couldn't stand it. For the rest of the day I just walked around getting more and more pissed off every time someone bumped into me or cut me off or something and dreaming of the day I'll leave here and how I'm never going to return or speak of China again. Sadly, this is probably not the case at all.

So I decided to stay in this evening and take it easy. I went down to my local convenience store and bought a Coke. The courtyard inside my apartment complex is usually quiet and has few people at night, and since it was a nice night I decided to sit for a bit and sip my drink.

Some guy came and sat on a bench swing across from me. He talked on his phone for a little bit and once he was off we were both silent for about 2 minutes.

"Hello?"
(Every time I Chinese person says this I ignore it. We weren't facing each other, he was just about 20 feet to my left.)
"Kiss me?"
"Fuck off."
"Hello lady, can you give me a kiss?"
(I get up at this point and start walking to my building.)
"I'd like a kiss."
"Fuck you. Do you know that English?"
"Oh. Okay."

God damn this place.

port bou

I'd like to be able to say that my entire life was planned during an acid trip in Port Bou, Spain but that's simply not true.

I had about a half an hour to kill before I had to catch my bus to work the other day. I wanted to just sit somewhere in read. But I can't do that on the street because people will shout at me, gather around me, spit at feet, and try to run me over with their bicycles. And I can't do it in a Chinese restaurant because people will shout at me, gather around me, spit at feet, and try to run me over with their bicycles. So I went to Starbucks that was nearby.

Anyway, as I was putting sugar into my tea I remembered that we'd run out of sugar at my house. So shamelessly I started scooping all the little sugar packets on the table into my bag. I figure this is one of those 20-something moments that ranks right up there with drinking a bloody mary as a vitamin supplement and determining if your clothes are wearable by smelling them.

This is different from college in that it's not that I can't afford to buy sugar, or breakfast, or laundry detergent (well maybe I can't afford breakfast sometimes but that's only because I need the bloody mary), but I'm simply too lazy to do so. I know I'll forget if I'm ever in a store and I'll never go out and buy it independently. It's not that I don't have the time, I think I wasted 3 hours today folding my post-it notes into a boingy paper thing, I just simply won't do it.

Actually I don't really have an excuse for the laundry thing since I have an ayi that comes twice a week and does it for me. If I remember to put it in the laundry bin, which I normally don't. It's just pure laziness. I have no one to blame but myself.

So I know my blog is pretty boring, but this one is just disturbing. I kind of laughed when I read the headline too. I don't think it's funny any more.

Anyway, I think I failed to mention that a Chinese guy saved my life the other day. I was walking down the street and there was a dump truck. A bunch of Chinese people started walking by it so I figured it was safe. Just as I was about to step out one of the sides swung down and some Chinese guy threw himself at me to prevent me from walking forward.

Of course, I should be happy that my life was saved but actually the entire incident annoyed me. Like, why the hell was the dump truck taking up the sidewalk. And when the guy threw himself at me he was screaming 'Hello! Hello!' the entire time. Which I find annoying at all times. And afterwards he stopped to laugh at me with all his friends. Actually if you had some kind of fucking rules and regulations regarding street safety and traffic in this supposed communist metropolis I wouldn't have been in danger in the first place. I should be laughing at you.

Anyway, I don't really feel indebted. As I believe I mentioned before, something threatens my life every time I walk out onto the street here.

the sub

If you type the names of two cities into google you can get flight times and prices of flights. Google rules. In other technology news the bible is being released for iPod. Only 'Jesus', 'Moses', and 'Abraham' are now 'Steve Jobs', 'Pixar', and 'Macman'. Hey, I'm impressed I knew that many bible names.

I've been sick for the past 5 days. My 7th cold since I've been in China. Which sucks, because not only did I miss the Nanjing jazz festival, but I also missed the closing party for my favorite bar in Shanghai. It's actually moving location because the neighborhood claims they're too loud. It sucks because they're probably going to sell out in a more popular part of town and they're moving to a bigger space. It was a great bar though. I knew the staff and the house band and most of the regulars. They all knew my drink and that when I first arrive I always sat in the corner looking slightly pissed off and drinking until I'd get drunk enough and then I'd jump up and run around talking to everyone. They're re-opening in December at their new location. I don't know where I'm going to drink for the next month.

There was actually another kind of dive bar in the same area. It's a basement bar with graffiti on the walls and dirty Chinese bands. I've actually only been there once before and I was drunkenly spilling my drink all over myself and catching popcorn in my mouth that was thrown at me from across the bar while a bitter guy from Melbourne called me a pleb. I still resent that comment. He was in the same dirty bar I was. Maybe I'll check it out again later this week.

Anyway, I'm occasionally an on-call teacher. I would refer to myself as a freelance teacher, but that's probably taking a catch phrase to the extreme, so I'll stick with the traditional title of 'substitute teacher'. Anyway, I was called up to take over a class this Saturday and I agreed for a little extra cash despite the fact that I was sick.

It was an easy class, they were just having a halloween party. They were all dressed up in costumes - a couple mummies, some monsters, and some thieves. They were pretty pathetic costumes actually. Anyway, we played a game where you take a spoon and use it to feel one of the other students while blindfolded and guess who it is. This of course turned into a disaster with the kids mostly stabbing each other with the spoon and grabbing and jumping on each other.

After teaching kids for a while I've come to the conclusion that you can tell exactly what kind of adult a child is going to become. I know the ones that are going to be yelling hello at foreigners on the street, the ones that are going to driving directly toward me on their scooters holding down the horn the entire time, and the girls who are going to say nothing inspiring or interesting and just giggle a lot.

I was kind of a loner kid that still managed to fuck around enough to be a class clown. In seventh grade English I had a desk near the door. One class I slowly started backing my desk towards the door and then when the teacher turned to write on the board I opened the door and shuffled my desk completely into the hallway. There was a little window in the door and I sat there waving at my friends from the hallway. The teacher didn't let me back in the classroom. I also pulled the fire alarm a couple times that year and there was an incident with the boy's changing room. Also, I remember one time walking into the teacher's lounge, rubbing my eyes and head mumbling, "I just can't deal with these students any more..." as I headed for the coffee machine. I didn't make it. The teachers intercepted me and made me go back to lunch.

But I digress...

So as we were finishing the class all the students had to get up and describe their costume. The Chinese assistant teacher and I had been given feather masks to wear. She said she was a fairy princess because she wanted to marry a rich man. Thank god I was wearing my mask, because I'm sure my look of disgust was scarier then any of the masks the kids were wearing. I said I was a bird (because of the feathers) and I wanted to fly far, far away.

We finished class after that.

why doesn't the sun set?

Wow, this takes on a whole new meaning to colonial legacy:

Mr Singh will use the Official Table of Drops, published by the British Home Office in 1913, to calculate the correct length of rope for the hanging.

fucking pigs

I'm American, and therefore have an interesting and unusual religious background.

My mother was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This used to be a small town, but with the growth of factory outlet stores, the town has boomed. Anyway, it's generally considered the gateway to the Pennsylvania Dutch, otherwise known as the Amish. I'm not Amish though.

My family, is Mennonite. I was actually shocked to learn they have a webpage and a statement about the war in Iraq, because they're not far from Amish. When I was a kid and we used to visit my grandmother, we'd attend a Sunday service at the Lancaster Mennonite Church. We'd drive through the Amish country side, past the Amish in their horse drawn buggies on the way to church, the fruit and vegetable markets, and all the suggestive Amish town name signs (Ball-In-Hand, Intercourse.) And really, seeing all this in middle America is possibly more shocking than anything you'd come across in China.

Anyway, the service would take place in a simple wooden church. Everyone would wear black or dark gray clothing, except my family members and I who would be robed in God knows what. Anyway, we'd all sit patiently in this simple building watching the big grandfather clock tick until it hit exactly 10am. Nobody would speak while waiting. I think it was okay to, but nobody would. It always confused me as a child why we'd wait for 15 minutes before the service doing nothing. I think I thought I was supposed to be praying or something, but really I was wondering why we couldn't just start because clearly everyone was already there.

I don't remember what the services were about. Something about Jesus I think, but they were long and the seats were uncomfortable for me. Regardless, we have a lot of patch work quilts and simple Christian paraphernalia floating around my house. In between the statue from Thailand of the pigs fucking and the woven baskets from Botswana.

So that's one side of my family.

My father was born in Provo, Utah and raised Mormon. I was not surprised to find the Mormon church had a website. If it didn't register as a non-profit it would be the biggest business in America. Anyway, he mostly broke away from the church but most my family on his side still practices.

I can't really tell you much about Mormons either. They don't have horns, they do have a lot of missionaries, and some of them marry multiple wives, but that's a different sect of Mormonism. And there are no Mormon missionaries in China, probably the only place on earth, and really, it's pretty nice.

Anyway, they do have some interesting beliefs about sex. That was taken straight from their website. Homosexual activity is a serious sin. Lovely people. And I've always enjoyed their cure for masturbation. See, I've always had a problem with number 4 myself. Seeing my reflection in the mirror after I've showered would cause anyone temptation.

I don't mean to specifically pick out the Mormons to pick on, give me any religion, ethnic group, nationality, etc. and I'll find something hilariously wrong with them, but the Mormons are just easy. Actually most of them are very nice people and I have several Mormon friends. Or at least acquaintances.

Anyway, this all has a point, not just a sad look at my genealogy.

So I was out at a bar the other day and I struck up a conversation with a guy:

"Where are you from?"
"Boston, you?" (I always say Boston because it's easier, sometimes I mix it up.)
"D.C."
"Oh, where in D.C?"
"Well, I went to Georgetown..."
"Oh, so you're not really from D.C., that's okay, I'm not really from Boston, where are you from?"
"Philadelphia."
"Oh do you know Lancaster?"
"Yeah, actually I live right near Lancaster."(So he wasn't really from Philly either)
"My family's from Lancaster. But I'm actually from Salt Lake."
"No way, I'm Mormon!"
"Are you really?"
"Yeah."
"Well my family's Mennonite."
"No way."
"I swear to God, but my dad was Mormon."
"No way."
"Seriously. I'm not Mormon though, are you really Mormon?"
"Yeah, I really am, I went to seminary and everything."
"Still?"
(holds up his glass of beer)"Well not really. So how weird is this, in a seedy bar in Shanghai, China, two people from Lancaster and connected to Mormons meet."
"And, we both lie about where we're from!"
"Haha, yeah."
"That's fucked up. We probably shouldn't talk to each other any more."
"Agreed."
(We both walk away from each other.)

So, it's a small world after all.

2x2x2

For those of you who have never been to China, I should point out that everything is wrapped in plastic. Worse than an old woman's living room. Everything. Like if you buy oranges for example. Each individual orange is wrapped in a little plastic baggy, then put in another plastic bag, and finally put in two more plastic bags for you to carry home. So everything I've eaten for the past 10 months, has spent a considerable amount of time in plastic:

China bans harmful plastic wrappers

My perma-headache becomes less and less of a mystery.

Not much else is going on in the China. Just the usual stampedes and bird flu outbreaks.

My ayi is in the next room folding my clothing into 2inch x 2inch x 2inch squares. Even my jeans. It fits conveniently in my drawers.

I'm off to work.

clitoris in the throat

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Wa ha ha

Halloween is just around the corner, and today I received the scariest ad yet:

Get Ready for Halloween at Carrefour!

There you go. A French company promoting an American holiday in a country where Christianity is a fashion statement, all your ghosts are ancestors, and the people wearing costumes are the most educated and respected artists and scholars.

And really, I think the last thing this country needs is people running around biting each other and choking on their fake plastic vampire teeth. Which are most likely toxic anyway. And probably made in China.

But hey, I can get socks for 1 kuai!

China Arrest

My god, they're not going to let me leave:

China will shut down borders if struck by bird flu

I'm going to start swimming if this is the case.

$100,000 Holiday

This is amazing:

China to launch space tourist

At only $100,000 they're going to be popping people up there every two days. Until something goes terribly wrong on the second mission.

Clearly I'm still at work.

I also just finished reading this article on 'America is more of an idea than a country'. I like it. I'd rather be a citizen of an idea than a country.

I think the whole idea of a country is pretty lame and, quite frankly, a little juvenile. It's like splitting up teams and cliques in school. This person belongs to that group, and that group hates this groups, and it's really difficult to change groups. Fuck that. I don't need to be in a group or a team, I'm going to go play on the monkey bars.

Also, I kind of resent the whole concept that I have to be part of a country. The UN should create a wanderers passport. You're not part of anywhere, you can go and work wherever you please, pay taxes in the country you live in at the time. It would be great. People ask you where you're from and you say, "I've go the wanderers," and there's no further resentments and only a stereotype of an unstable commitmentphobe. I could live with that.

Only 29 more minutes until lunch.

8 Continents, 5 Oceans

I'm not sure if you all remember the Pearl Orient Tower:



For the past week the top big ball has had a map of the world rotating around on the light display at night. Except they've added an extra continent. It's in between Asia and America. It's all red and sometimes turns to purple. It's not the shape of China, more like an altered Asia. I'm not sure what they're trying to get at.

Ebay is selling Chinese babies now. For that authentic Chinese flavor...

Also the health minister in China put out a 'serious warning' for the bird flu, so I may be dead in a week. If the Chinese government says there may be a problem, half the country is probably already infected.

I haven't done any work at all today. I may not come in next week. I just don't think I can work like this. Not now at least.

The UN can't handle the earthquake relief. Apparently the tsunami and the hurricane has topped our capacity to deal with natural disasters for this year. And we handled both of those so well.

I'm not sure what I'm up to this weekend. Probably another exhibit opening on Sunday. I'm feeling very lazy though.

i wouldn't say i've been missing it...

So anyway, I'm at work right now. I've spent the past couple hours reading the news, the Onion, and 'Rants and Raves' off craigslist and I'm pretty much bored. I've made a couple phone calls, sent out a couple emails, but there's nothing going on. I'd rather be in a giant rat suit in a large cage with a bunch of mouse scientists poking various drugs into me. Nice.

The girls outside my office have been talking about the different types of English all day. I'm tired of listening in. Oh right, I have my own corner office, complete with a door and a window. I'm tempted to just walk in one morning, close my door, draw my blinds and either a) go back to sleep or b)get drunk and listen to music. It's not that spectacular though. I think it's actually just a converted utility room.

Anyway, I work near Nanjing Road which is the biggest tourist street in Shanghai. It's supposed to be pedestrian, but there's still some little tourist train car that rides up and down it. The road is always crowded and full of people trying to sell you watches, candy, remote control cars, corn, art, and everything else. For these reasons, I try to avoid going to Nanjing Lu as much as possible. But now I work here, so I can't. I did find a shop that sells little tuna fish sandwich pouches. Not too bad for 30 cents.

I am just trying to kill time here you realize? I may be blogging a lot more now that I'm working.

Anyway, hopefully I'm going to Nanjing next weekend for the Jazz festival. It should be good. I've only been to Nanjing once before and it was rainy and depressing. But I did go to the Rape of Nanking memorial. That is really depressing. Those Japanese really fucked this place up.

Oh also, there's a warning out for more Japanese protests in response to the Japanese PM visiting the was shrine. I don't think they'll pull it together though. But I'd like to see some protests.

metal rods

As I was going to work yesterday I saw a large crowd of people surrounding an accident. I knew someone had died because of the size of the crowd. I normally just walk by, because I'm not a fan of dead bodies, but since I was up high in my double-decker bus I got the full view.

A guy on a scooter had run into a strip of metal hanging off a three wheel crate in front of him. He had fallen to the side of the road, his arms clenched against his stomach, and his face permanently frozen in an expression of someone who had just been hit fatally in the stomach. His eyes were clenched tightly and his face withered in pain. There was a chalk outline around his body. There was no ambulance and nobody felt the need to cover his corpse. I felt a bit sick for the rest of the day.

Thinking back, I'm not sure how the chalk outline got there. I remember seeing only one police officer in the crowd of about 200 Chinese. Unless pre-determination was trying to prove itself as obviously as possible.

So that's China. How many of you saw a dead guy on the way to work yesterday?

Speaking of work, I have a new job. In an office. I'm still teaching in the evenings, because it makes a lot of money but for some reason I decided to join the working world again. Goodbye to my 10-hour weeks. I don't really remember applying for the job or going in for an interview, but somehow at rush hour this morning I found myself pushing through a billion Shanghainese on the way to work.

I'm already sick of being back in an office. The lighting, the inspirational crap on the walls, the bad gossip - it's all out of a terrible nightmare. The MSG has gone too far.

So anyway, I'd normally drop names but I've heard of a lot of people getting fired for blogging about their work, so I won't. Though I have no problem with being fired, I feel I shouldn't push it, and apparently my blog is no longer blocked in China. But anyway, I'm doing research for an international company. And I'm the supervisor. I don't know how that happened, but somehow I'm supervising a Japanese, a Korean, and a Chinese in completing our research project in the next two months.

God I hate offices. Since I'm supervisor I'm already changing my hours to 4 days a week starting late and leaving early. It's a bullshit project, I'm already half way done and I've only done six hours of work. I've found that with most office environments. The 40-hour workweek is all pomp and circumstance.

So anyway, I'm in the grind. It's exhausting because I do nothing. It's interfering with my 'stare at the wall' time and 'lay in bed' time. I may not last the week.

Chinese Astronauts

I was just watching Chinese TV - which isn't a very enjoyable activity in general - and marveling at how normal I found it to be. For some reason every other station had a program on Chinese opera. The singers were in their traditional costumes, faces fully painted, disco ball rolling, multi-color lighting flashing, and smoke machine in full effect. Very traditional. And one billion people are tuned in. But I didn't find any of that really surprising or funny, just kind of an average occurrence, which was a little disturbing.

I've also found it a bit disturbing this week to know that I've been going to sleep while Chinese people have been floating around in the sky above me. They literally are everywhere now.

Also, it was my birthday on Friday, so I took that to mean I could use all of last week to celebrate. Not too bad. If I felt I needed a reason to drink, that was good enough for me.

I met this French guy last week who was a bit odd. Even for a French. He told me a story about how he'd spent a weekend in a Chinese prison. He deals in textiles and one of his dealers failed to supply him with the product after he had paid for it, so he went around looking for it himself. He eventually found it in a garage in Guangzhou and he and some of his staff broke in. The police came by and arrested him for breaking and entering. Since it was a Friday night, the French consulate was closed until Monday morning. He said the police were very nice to him since he was their first foreigner. He got his own cell and they turned on the air-conditioning when asked. Anyway, the consulate brought their lawyers and settled the matter on Monday and he got his textiles back. He claimed he was so distraught by the entire experience he had to take a three-week vacation to Australia right after. I can sympathize.

So I guess the point is that next time you're bitching about your 40+ hour work week and making fun of the lazy French while secretly envying them, just keep it in mind that their laziness extends to all sectors. I bet the American consulate wouldn't have been closed. Possibly planning some secret covert disaster, but at least open. He did get a three week vacation right after though. Fucking French. If I worked more than 10 hours a week I would totally be spiteful.

Anyway, the good news is that the polar ice caps are melting, thus making water that was impenetrable to oil drillers available. And it appears as though the bird flu is moving west. So since it originated in western China, those of us in eastern China should be the last to get it. Haha suckers.

Le ciel lui tombe sur la tête

The new Astrix book has been released. He's always been a bit of a personal hero, despite the fact he's French. And it even looks like he's developing a political agenda.

The creatures are led by a cuddly toy who has at his beck and call an army of dim superman clones in tights and capes.

They announce they are from a planet called TADSYLWINE - an anagram of Walt Disney - and that their "sage" goes by the name of HUBS - an anagram of Bush.

Darkon

Congratulations to a good friend of mine who just finished shooting this film:

Darkon the Movie

Just when you think you've got everyone figured out...

It reminds me of the documentary Trekkies but this one looks more interesting and bizarre.

How to enter the DPRK

Plus a letter from your current employer, an updated CV, two passport photos, 1000 Euros (the new dollar apparently)...

new old handset

I found a new accessory for my cell phone this weekend:




This way I can walk around Shanghai with my actual cell phone in my bag, and just a cute cord and retro phone dangling out. Just so the Chinese are assured we're all insane.

Also, I'm currently trying to arrange a trip to North Korea next weekend. The DPRK government has allowed visas for American tourists for just these two weeks in October for the Mass Games. This is the only time in the past 13 years that Americans have been allowed into the country. I'm dying to go. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or funny either. I'd really love to be one of the few Americans to have visited North Korea. Anyway, I'm sure it will be outrageously expensive and all the visas have been taken, but if you're interested Koryo Tours has a trip. I'm only posting this because I don't think anyone who reads this blog will actually go. But if you do end up going and I don't, well then, I'm fucking pissed.

I had a pretty productive weekend for a bum. I found a really great little second hand bookstore/cafe on Saturday. I've actually known of its existence for a while, but because of it's name - Old China Hand Bookstore - I haven't gone. But it was really pretty great. The best tea I've had in China. Most of the books are in Chinese. I found a Chinese book on the punk bank Black Flag or 黑旗, a Chinese Research Book on Homosexuality, a Chinese book on the fashion markets of London (which I was pleased to learn showcased a belt I had bought on Portobello Road. I'm art!), and a couple bitter expat rants. It was an enjoyable afternoon. I'll definitely be back.

Anyway, that was followed by a exhibition opening for Jin Shan entitled "I am 27 years old." He found a picture book of the 'collective history' of the Chinese and photoshopped himself into various historical scenes over the past 27 years. The captions were the best part. And the gallery it was at (1812 Artspace) is really nice.

Today I went to a couple more galleries and art exhibits. I've been feeling very inspired and creative recently. I most likely won't act on it, but it's getting me out of my apartment. Also, it's cooled down a bit here finally, so I don't mind walking around the city.

So hopefully I'll be off the North Korea in a couple days with my new mobile phone accessory. If not, I'm sure you'll be hearing from me soon.

chocolate ice-cream

So the Guangxi province was absolutely spectacular. Yangshou, a small town outside of Guilin, is beautiful with lovely people. It's the kind of place that makes me want to drop everything and move there with nothing but a hash pipe and a groovy pair of purple, striped, drawstring pants (note: I don't actually own a pair of purple, striped, drawstring pants, and I never actually use the word 'groovy'). And honestly, I only get that sensation like once or twice a year.

Anyway, there was hiking and biking and nature and interesting rock formations. I got a bit sunburned. At least I finally got my summer color at the beginning of October. It was all very enchanting until I got food poisoning. Leave it up to China to ruin a good time by throwing a curve ball right into my gut. Amazingly, it wasn't from the Chinese food, but from a little bit of chocolate ice-cream I ate. I can't believe it. However, since I had finished some Chinese food a couple hours earlier, I still managed to vomit that up all night as well. I can tell you that Chinese food coming out looks the same as coming in. It's not pleasant. And throwing up rice is probably the worst experience in the world. I kid you not. It was pretty bad. I think I was actually vomiting blood at one point. I realize this is a bad sign, but I'll be damned if I go to a Chinese hospital, especially in the countryside. And I seem to be doing okay now, so I'm not too worried.

So that was my Wednesday night. On Thursday my friends decided they wanted to hire a boat to take us back up the Li River to Guilin. Easy for them to say, since I was the only one who spoke Chinese. So in my slightly hallucinating, definitely delusional state I bargained for a boat. But I couldn't get one that would go the entire way. So we had to take a bus, then a motorbike, then the boat, then another boat, and then two more buses to get to Guilin. Did I mention I was vomiting the entire night before?

Anyway, at some point my delusions changed. I was no longer the master of Chinese who could bargain the best price, but I became a worm, slowly being tortured under the leering and mocking gaze of children with a magnifying glass. This was as we were trudging through the heat of Guangxi to our second boat.

China is supposedly the oldest civilization in the world. Our second boat was just to get us to cross the river. You could ask, "Why didn't our first boat just drop us off on the other side of the bank?", but honestly, you'd never get an answer to that. For thousands of years it hasn't occurred to a single Chinese person that that could be an option. Anyway, regardless of that, the place we had to walk to in order to get the boat to cross the river also wasn't an easy situation. These people have been crossing this river for literally thousands and thousands of years. And now, with the advent of modern technology, it still takes 6 phone calls on cellular phones, two different boats, and five pieces of paper with red chops on them in order to cross a bit of water about 100 feet wide. If I didn't have any bags, I would have swam. Or walked across, the water wasn't deep.

The oldest civilization in the world.

But it is a beautiful area of the world and I highly recommend getting there before they turn it into an amusement park with strip malls, toboggan rides, flash bars, and crap hotels. I'm not kidding you, they will do it.

And for a couple of days I remembered why it is that I spend so much time on China. I still can't put it into words.

my god

I'm back in contact with the internet and news and this is what I have to read:


"God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq . . .' And I did.

"And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'.

"And by God I'm gonna do it."

My president is delusional and I'm an athiest.

I'll write about the fabulous Guangxi province later.

october

The other day I was finishing my shower at the gym when a women came by, threw open my shower curtain, asked to borrow my shampoo, and then reached in my toiletries bag and took it. I didn't say a word. I just stood there naked in shock at the blatant violation of my privacy. I wasn't sure if I could just walk over to her shower, throw open the curtain and take it back. So instead I went and changed into my clothes and found her later. These are the kinds of things I have to deal with on a regular basis.

I went snowboarding today. It was a pretty hot Saturday, so my roommate and I decided to hit the slope. That's right, Shanghai has an indoor ski field, imported piece by piece from Japan. It was great. Take the smallest, most pathetic bunny hill you've ever been on, flatten it to a 20 degree angle, and you've got the Shanghai Ski Field. There is a little lift that you can take to the top, but it goes pretty slowly, so we just walked up the side. It really wasn't that strenuous or anything. The snow was complete shit. Run your hand along the inside of your freezer, and you've got the general consistency of the snow. I fell once and now I have a huge scratch down my arm. All the Chinese were decked out in the ski outfits the center provides. These were also imported from Japan and thus have Japanese writing all over them. I wore the pants - black with an orange stripe down the sides - and a t-shirt. I think the t-shirt confirmed the thought in all the Chinese that foreigners are insane. Yes it was 90 degrees outside, but there was snow inside. How can you wear a t-shirt?

You had the option of renting skis or a snowboard. The Chinese were all skiing. Or trying to. They'd go about 3 feet with their legs spreading apart the entire time and then somehow do a face plant. It was hilarious. Watching that would have been all I needed, but I did actually get a couple 'runs' in. The actually had a bit of a snow park. It was a jump and a rail. There were a couple other foreigners there and we ripped it up on the jump. The Chinese were gawking in awe the entire time. It was a pretty fun time. Since it wasn't my board, and it was a piece of shit, I had no problems with running it across bare areas or landing on it oddly. I have no idea where it came from, all it had written on it was 'Made in America'.

Anyway, I'm getting out of Shanghai next week. I'm heading down to Guilin. Hopefully it will be good. It's the national holiday this week, so I don't have to work. 56 years of the People's Republic of China. Wow. In Shanghai people celebrated by buying a bunch of novelty balloons in the shape of hammers and running around hitting each other. The Oriental Pearl Tower also changed its light pattern to red stars. I can feel the patriotism pulsing.

Anyway, hopefully I'll take some pictures in this next week. Guilin is supposed to be incredible. I may also be very annoyed because I'm traveling with 1.6 billion other people. I need to get out of this city though.

123456

If you come to China and open a Chinese bank account, do not get your wallet stolen with you Chinese ATM card inside. This may seem obvious, but I still feel as though I should warn you.

So, as I believe I blogged earlier, I had my wallet stolen. This didn't really concern me because I didn't have that much money in my wallet, and in order to use my ATM card at all you need my pin number. And although I may be jackass, I don't carry my pin number around in my wallet. It's the screensaver on my phone. ha.

So anyway, after going through the millions of papers they gave me when I opened my account, I couldn't find any number to call and report my stolen card. So I decided to go to my bank the following day and cancel it. Once I arrived at my bank I learned that there is only one branch in all of Shanghai that can cancel and reissue a new ATM card. I should point out that when I got my ATM card they just handed it to me across the counter of my branch. It took about 5 seconds. It's not personalized or anything.

Anyway, I didn't have time to go to this one location to cancel it, so I had to wait until the next day. I arrived at the cancellation branch to learn that, for some reason, it closes for an hour in the middle of each day. Around the time I decided to arrive. So I had to go wait out the hour in a nearby park. I got to the branch and stood in an enormous line with the 3000 other people in Shanghai who have had their card stolen. I finally got to the clerk and had to fill out 5 different sets of papers all in Chinese. After going through this and having them talk me through the papers (No, you put your american address there and your Chinese address here - I don't know why they needed my American address, I didn't give it when I opened my account.) Anyway, I didn't even get my new card. I have to go back next week and fill out more paperwork.

After explaining this to my rooommate she pointed out it probably would have been easier for me to open a new account, take out all the money in my old account and put it in the new account. She's right, but I'd rather go through the pain. And if you were wondering, no money had been stolen from my account. I can continue to afford my stripper and champagne lifestyle. I knew the Chinese would never be able to figure out the pin 123456.

I spent all of yesterday in a painful haze of hangover hell. I left the house around 6 to pick up some Chinese food - the only time I find Chinese food to be appropriate. Everyone in the restaraunt and I were choking and coughing on some chemical they were using to clean the windows as I was waiting for them to finish my take-away tofu. I briefly wondered what was floating around the kitchen if this was out with customers. But for a dollar, what do you expect? I took a delivery menu as I left. I don't want to have to think about that stuff.

another glass of bubbly please...

I should not be blogging right now, because I've had a little bit of champagne tonight, but I can't help it. I got in to grad school today!!!!!!!! Yay for me! I am going to be in Melbourne, Australia next year, the most liveable city in the world (Seriously, it was actually proven it is.) I am out of this dump of a most unliveable country in the world. Although, Shanghai is the most liveable city in the most unliveable country. I think Baghdad may have scored higher than anywhere in China.

Whatever, the point is, I'm not going to be here next year. But China still managed to give me a 'fuck you' to my accomplishment. My wallet and sunglasses were stolen today. It brought me down a little, but fuck those bastards, You're still going to be in this dump next year. HA fucking HA.

Anyway, if your wallet had been stolen and you had just been accepted into graduate school, what would you do? Here's what I did. I went and saw a bunch of male Australian strippers. Fuck yeah baby. Feb can not come soon enough. It was great. I was even pulled on stage and given a lap dance. I've never had a lap dance before. It was spectacular. I totally see what guys dig in the whole experience. And I came to a conclusion, one that I think every man in the world came to many years ago. I wasn't drinking that much during the stripping, so, i think, if everyone just walked around naked all the time, I believe, that alcoholism would cease to exist. Seriously.

I should point out right now, that most of the foreigners in China aren't that good looking. In fact, I think my standards have dropped by default. Excluding myself of course. Seriously, not to say that everyone else in the world is better looking than Chinese men, because they are, I'm not being specifically racist, I'm saying every asian outside of China is better looking than they are here, but I'm being deprived here. I love strippers.

Anyway, the best part, was after the show, the strippers bought US drinks. It was incredible. They were all from Melbourne, and built like an intricately planned sculptures, in a way that no Chinese man could ever be built. It's all the dumplings. And for a moment, when I was leaving the bar, I decided I loved everything in Shanghai. Especially my stolen wallet and sunglasses. You fucking bastards.

I'm out of here.

Au - fucking - stralia baby!!!!

Guantánamo Bay For Lease

Christoph Büchel and Gianni Motti are beginning negotiations to rent Guantánamo Bay from the Cuban Government. Space – who claims it and how those claims are enforced – is central to their project.



Find out more at http://www.guantanamo-initiative.com.

In contrast with its current function, the Guantanamo Initiative proposes to transform Guantanamo Bay from a military base into a site dedicated to the promotion of culture. The artists envision the creation of a laboratory that situates culture at the center of contemporary debates. This cultural base would promote exchange and dialogue, thereby reinterpreting the existing military infrastructure.

Support their cause.

too much tImE

Sorry, I have a lot of time on my hands to surf through various websites. I came across this forum posting and found it interesting and funny. Especially the last post (well the last one I'm sharing on my site.):

Posted: Aug 19, 2005 - 04:40 AM


Post subject: What is wrong with us?

I want to share with you guys about an article written by Mr. Cam MacMurchy, a Canadian journalist working in Beijing. See the link
http://cn.news.yahoo.com/050818/1350/2egpg.html
Sorry, it is translated into Chinese. I couldn¡¯t find the English Version. Take this chance to brush your Chinese skill.

In a nutshell, he says he doesn¡¯t understand Chinese motivation or attitude towards love. Based on his experience with Chinese girls, He found out most of Chinese are so craving for love. Chinese girls want the confirmation of love only after a few dates. Most of Chinese girls he knows never talk about their boyfriends. For him, Love is a gradually evolved process. You can¡¯t find love just after a few dates.

I couldn¡¯t agree with Cam MacMurchy more. I have been thinking this question for a while. What is the problem with us, the Chinese girls? Why we so craving for love? Why we don¡¯t know how to love?

For those young Chinese women between 25 and 35, we grew up in a culture that nobody talked about love. Not only the love for relationship, also about the simple love for another human being. We didn¡¯t prepare ourselves to face the harsh reality of relationship. There was no book/nobody guide us go through the turbulence early adulthood. The only thing we were taught in high school was studying to be competitive to get into the college. The only thing we were taught in college was studying to be competitive to get a good job. After we got out of college, some Chinese people pocket started to fill of money. They started to have mistresses. Many of young girls preferred to be somebody¡¯s mistress instead of having a job. Those smart and pretty ones all hitched on Mr. Money. I had the strong desire for the material things just like everyone else, but the first job out of college only paid 800rmb, not enough to buy a decent dress. I didn¡¯t know what to do. I was trapped in a dark tunnel. I felt I need the love to get me out.

Our parents couldn¡¯t help at all. They grew up during the Chairman Mao era. The only one they were allowed to love was Mr. Chairman Mao. If you loved somebody more than Chairman Mao, you were a bad person. My mother told they had to read the little Redbook during their wedding saying that Chairman Mao was her ultimate love. I don't blame them. They screwed up more then we do.

Cam MacMurchy is right. Somehow we just want to be in the mood of feeling love even we don¡¯t know we love or not. After many years struggling, I realized that I need a power to center myself, the power is not the love from somebody else, it is the power which resides inside myself.



  Posted: Aug 19, 2005 - 10:39 AM


Maybe Chinese girls, raised under parents such as you describe, are just too intense. They need to relax, spread their wings, and enjoy the freedom that life now offers them .. instead of having one-track minds about love and marriage. The quickest way to scare off a (western) guy is too expect too much, too soon .. (commitment, that is).



  Posted: Aug 19, 2005 - 11:32 AM

I'm not Chinese, but I can see how it can be a problem. I've dated a Chinese man, and he was so surprised at how a western woman (such as myself:) Can be so expressive. I didn't get it back then why he found it so intriguing, but I'm beginning to understand.

China has come out of thousands of years of trying to build itself up. Maybe there wasn't time for Romantic Love? Perhaps now is the time:) I know you all have those romantic songs on the radio, people are yearning for love and to be loved.


  Posted: Aug 19, 2005 - 04:39 PM


half nonsense and half truth



  Posted: Aug 19, 2005 - 06:37 PM


Gradually people are evolving, like 5 years ago never saw someone hugging in public, now see it all the time so, there's hope


  Posted: Aug 19, 2005 - 11:58 PM


like apes


...and no, I didn't write that last post...

Sing a Pore

I'm cutting and pasting this entire New York Times article because it's good, and you should read it. Not just ignore some link I put up:


September 14, 2005

Singapore and Katrina
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Singapore



There is something troublingly self-indulgent and slothful about America today - something that Katrina highlighted and that people who live in countries where the laws of gravity still apply really noticed. It has rattled them - like watching a parent melt down.



That is certainly the sense I got after observing the Katrina debacle from half a world away here in Singapore - a city-state that, if it believes in anything, believes in good governance. It may roll up the sidewalks pretty early here, and it may even fine you if you spit out your gum, but if you had to choose anywhere in Asia you would want to be caught in a typhoon, it would be Singapore. Trust me, the head of Civil Defense here is not simply someone's college roommate.



Indeed, Singapore believes so strongly that you have to get the best-qualified and least-corruptible people you can into senior positions in the government, judiciary and civil service that its pays its prime minister a salary of $1.1 million a year. It pays its cabinet ministers and Supreme Court justices just under $1 million a year, and pays judges and senior civil servants handsomely down the line.



From Singapore's early years, good governance mattered because the ruling party was in a struggle for the people's hearts and minds with the Communists, who were perceived to be both noncorrupt and caring - so the state had to be the same and more.



Even after the Communists faded, Singapore maintained a tradition of good governance because as a country of only four million people with no natural resources, it had to live by its wits. It needed to run its economy and schools in a way that would extract the maximum from each citizen, which is how four million people built reserves of $100 billion.



"In the areas that are critical to our survival, like Defense, Finance and the Ministry of Home Affairs, we look for the best talent," said Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy. "You lose New Orleans, and you have 100 other cities just like it. But we're a city-state. We lose Singapore and there is nothing else. ... [So] the standards of discipline are very high. There is a very high degree of accountability in Singapore."



When a subway tunnel under construction collapsed here in April 2004 and four workers were killed, a government inquiry concluded that top executives of the contracting company should be either fined or jailed.



The discipline that the cold war imposed on America, by contrast, seems to have faded. Last year, we cut the National Science Foundation budget, while indulging absurd creationist theories in our schools and passing pork-laden energy and transportation bills in the middle of an energy crisis.



We let the families of the victims of 9/11 redesign our intelligence organizations, and our president and Congress held a midnight session about the health care of one woman, Terri Schiavo, while ignoring the health crisis of 40 million uninsured. Our economy seems to be fueled lately by either suing each other or selling each other houses. Our government launched a war in Iraq without any real plan for the morning after, and it cut taxes in the middle of that war, ensuring that future generations would get the bill.



Speaking of Katrina, Sumiko Tan, a columnist for the Sunday edition of The Straits Times in Singapore, wrote: "We were shocked at what we saw. Death and destruction from natural disaster is par for the course. But the pictures of dead people left uncollected on the streets, armed looters ransacking shops, survivors desperate to be rescued, racial divisions - these were truly out of sync with what we'd imagined the land of the free to be, even if we had encountered homelessness and violence on visits there. ... If America becomes so unglued when bad things happen in its own backyard, how can it fulfill its role as leader of the world?"



Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. "Today's conservatives," he wrote, "differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.



"The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. ... [But] it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up."

围观

So I have a Chinese tutor that comes by a couple times a week and attempts to teach me this God forsaken language. The book I'm studying from is translated to Speak Mandarin, Talk About Culture. I don't know why I've chosen this book to study from. I find Chinese culture a painful topic. Especially in Mandarin.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago we were reading about 管闲事 (guan xian shi) and 围观 (wei guan). 管闲事 translates as 'mind other's business' or 'make everyone's business one's own'. 围观 is to 'surround and watch' or 'encircle'. These are both common activities in China. At first I thought it was just because I was a foreigner that people always surrounded me when I bought food, for instance. However, a number of events have happened that have enlightened me to the fact that the Chinese butt in to every situation. Except maybe some of the important ones.

The other day I was on my bus going to work. I ride the double decker bus. Anyway, a bus in front of us pulled away from the stop and a car behind it ran into it. This was on one of the most crowded streets in Shanghai. The bus was pulled across the two lanes, with only a little space on the right to pull through. Both the bus driver and the car driver got out of their vehicles and started yelling at each other. Between my bus and the bus that had been hit was one other regular decker bus and about three other cars. A huge crowd gathered in the middle of the street to watch the fight between the bus driver and the car driver. Eventually a couple of cops arrived at the scene. The entire time the bus in front of mine was trying it's best to squeeze by the little space allowed on the right side of stopped bus. After about ten minutes it succeeded. The three cars behind that bus followed it. Other cars started to pull around my bus and get by. My bus couldn't squeeze through the space on the right of the street because the branches from the trees surrounding the street hang too low, and if attempted, my fellow passengers and I on the second floor of the bus would be taken out by the trees. So my bus pulled across the road to the left near a large stream of oncoming traffic. Of course, it couldn't pass on the left b/c of the large stream of oncoming traffic. So it just ended up blocking traffic on my side of the road further. We sat like that for another 5 minutes or so with people screaming and honking horns and 100 people in my bus pressed up against the windows watching the scene until a police officer realized what was going on and had the bus that had been hit move. I wasn't too late for work.

This weekend I was walking down the street when a guy in front of me grabbed his girlfriend by the hair and threw her into a street advertisement where the characters for "Creating a More Civilized City Area" were written. People kind of slowed down to watch. She put up a fight for a bit and then became submissive. Not even the police officers standing by watching did anything.

Last night I watched a German film called "Stroszek". It's about a man who is released from prison and comes to the US with his girlfriend to start a new life in Wisconsin. They confiscate his pet bird at customs. His mobile home is sold in auction when he can't pay for it. His girlfriend begins prostituting herself to truck drivers and eventually runs off with a couple of them to Vancouver. He steels a tow truck and holds up a convenience store for only $32 and a frozen turkey. He ends up in an amusement area that has a dancing chicken, a rabbit that drives a toy fire engine, and a rooster that plays the piano. He rides the ski lift around once and then shoots himself at the realization of what has become of his American dream. I don't think I've ever been so homesick before.

bill gates is a loser

Stupid microsoft. Did you really think you could work with China?


He testified that one of the lowest moments of his career with Microsoft was a conversation in which Gates yelled at him and said the company had been "f-----" by the Chinese people and its government.

I wake up and say the same thing every morning.

Josh in China

My photo's from when my friend Josh was here are up. You can check out the highlights from my flickr badge, or else visit his webpage for the full set.

Here are a couple of my faves:

Tibet Freedom

Smiling faces were everywhere as people celebrated the 40th birthday of the Tibet Autonomous Region

I saw this on TV. They did look kind of happy. Maybe the Beastie Boys and the Tibet Freedom Concert have it all wrong...

In other news, I actually did end up leaving the house this weekend. It didn't take much. Just a bar invite. In case you were worried...

Also, news on how China is handling their "hurricane". It looks a little better than the other super power.

服饰与美容

It came to my attention the other day, that I have failed to mention the most important development in China this millennium - the release of Vogue China. Finally I can rip out pages from a quality magazine for my tailor to copy, rather than that crap Cosmopolitan and Elle that I've been using. You can imagine my shock and disgust when I realized I was grasping the hands of the Chinese representative and jumping up and down yelling "Vogue's in China! Vogue's in China!" at it's premier in the Jingan mall - where nothing is sold for less than 1000 USD. What an event. This happened about a month ago.

This brings me to the next groundbreaking event in China - a release of an "American Idol"-like TV show called "Super Girl". Guy's aren't invited to participate. I actually haven't been watching because Chinese music makes me sick. The number one hit here - that's been around since I arrived here in January - haunts my dreams. It's everywhere. I don't even know the words. I can sing it, but I have no idea what I'm saying, and I've seen the characters, which all seem too complex for me to look up. I think they're something along the lines of 'you lied and betrayed me but I still love you.' It doesn't matter, it's total crap. If they really wanted to fuck up the inmates at Guantanamo, they'd play that non-stop instead of the theme to Sesame Street. It's more or less played non-stop here and I'm barely holding on to my sanity.

Anyway, I think they announced the winner of "Super Girl". It was a tough competition full of scandal. Apparently there were rumors going around that the winner was a lesbian because she never wore skirts and had a short haircut and people said she had a wife. Well whatever, she emerged victorious. And life goes on.

No, I haven't forgotten about the terrible hurricane. In fact, last night I was at my friend's apartment, which is much nicer than mine, so he has access to BBC news and CNN. CNN was crap as always, but BBC was doing good coverage. Likening the situation to that of the tsunami although less organized and more pathetic. "The richest nation in the world thrown into horrific, third-world standards because the money that could have been used to prevent this problem was diverted to a useless, fake war instead." At least the rest of the world holds the US with some respect. It actually was a bit embarrassing for me to watch how terrible the situation is being handled since I was the only American in the room. So I mostly just ended up shouting profanities at bushie all night.

I'm currently debating whether I should leave my house for the next couple days. I have to go to work at some point on Monday, but I may just have some food and alcohol delivered to my apartment and call it a weekend. I'm in that state of mind right now. I've got my vogue, about 1000 pirated dvds to choose from, and internet connection. I should be okay.

LA goes blue?

"Tensions over funding for the New Orleans levees emerged more than a year ago when a local official asserted money had been diverted to pay for the Iraq war."

So, now that he's lied to us, fucked up our economy, killed literally tens of thousands of civilians around the globe (including those in his own country), and drowned an entire city, will we impeach him?

No, of course not. We'll probably change the constitution so he can stay in another 4 years.

And all Clinton did was get a little lovin'.

We have only ourselves to blame.

the associated press

Links to photo 1, photo 2

sue america

I have to say, I am saddened by the amount of death that has occurred this week. Thousands dead due to a hurricane. Another thousand dead due to a stampede. It's all very traumatic.

I have to admit, I don't like seeing bad things happen to America. Although I realize the bubble of safety that I learned engulfs America when I was young doesn't actually exist, it's still kind of sad to see it actually penetrated. To someone who grew up watching the horrors of the rest of the world safely on TV from her suburban home, it seems a bit backwards to now be sitting in the People's Republic of China and looking at pictures of weeping wives next to their recently deceased husbands on a river bank in America. I've been saying this is going to be the case for the past ten years, but I never actually believed my words. If you get me on a rant about the state of the world, I always go off on the perceived safety of America, and how it's on a downward spiral, and we'll all be aware of this in ten years.

But it's a terrible thing that happened to New Orleans. I had a great time when I was there. Full of the best kind of sin. I can't believe the entire city is now underwater. Though with ancient levees and PBS programs predicting this, it really shouldn't be that unbelievable.

In Asia news, I think another Typhoon is headed our way. Fortunately I think Taiwan is going to take the brunt for the mainland. So Shanghai should be okay. Just a little more wind and rain for us.

I read an article today that a Chinese man is suing Deloitte Touche in China for treating Taiwan and China as separate countries on their website. He claims it has caused him years of mental anguish and shame as a Chinese citizen. Most lawmakers think the lawsuit will fall through.

When we heard about the stampede in China, it was like one of our worst China fears coming true. Everyone's waiting for something to spark mass chaos and copious amounts of death and destruction.

There is a flag raising in Tiananmen Square every morning. When I lived in Beijing four years ago, I went to the National Day ceremonies there. It was so crowded that I was actually lifted off my feet by the crowd. Through a series of pushing and screaming, my friends and I managed to get to the front of the crowd. There was a row of guards holding us back, making sure nobody got too close to the ceremony. I asked the guard if he liked his job. He said nothing.