Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s come to this: blog.com sucks and wordpress.com is intermittently blocked from China. Because of this, I’ve finally exited the dark ages and moved my blog to my own webspace at http://leaveyourdailyhell.com
"Bum Cafe"--with Starbucks prices!
NOTE: Blog.com has all of a sudden stopped working. I am no longer able to make new posts. As a result, I have indefinitely moved my blog to http://mistershanghai.typepad.com
I am EXTREMELY disappointed in this turn of events, because I have to leave this blog behind, on which I have worked so hard. Because blog.com has no support team to speak of, I have no means of resolving the problem.
A very wise older person–who may very well have been my grandmother–once told me that the reason time seems to speed up as we age is that each day constitutes a smaller percentage of our life. It wasn’t until yesterday, when I received email notification that February 1′s paycheck had been deposited into my Bank of China account, that I realized the end was nigh. The end of January, of course.
In less than 48 hours, my favorite month of the year will begin. “Why,” you might ask, “is February your favorite month of the year?” Well, beyond the fact that February is my birth month–which should be any sane person’s favorite month of the year–it represents something else to me. Most tangibly, February is when winter’s icy grip is finally broken (somewhat, anyway), when the thaw begins and, only then, moves forward without significant interruption. February is also the shortest month of the year, which is great for those of us with set monthly pay–28 (or, in the case of leap years, 29) days to spend 30 (or, in the case of January, March, May, July, August, October and December 31) days worth of pay.
Relaxing thousands of feet above the ground isn't too different from rolling around in grass, right?
This year’s February is particularly special to me because: (a) it marks my quarter-centennial (b) it’s the first February I’ve spent out of the country and (c) I’ll be spending this February in three countries, when I venture to Thailand and then Cambodia in celebration of my quarter century on the planet.
Of course they put the wood-carving man playing the wood-carving cello behind glass so you can't get a clear picture.
Time is not the only dimension of life that tends to contract as we age, I find, nor the most obvious. Being creatures of relativity, I think we tend to forget that, although our conscious minds are as developed–when compared to our bodies–as they have been our whole lives, our bodies used to be very, very small. When I was at home in St. Louis for the month of October, this was made very apparent to me. Being stuck in the suburbs without a car, I made a habit of going on daily walks, some of them long–and at least once a week walking to Dover Mill Addition, the one-street subdivision where I believe my awareness of the world took shape. I lived there from November 1987 to November 1992, from age two and three-quarters to age seven and three-quarters. Because of the presence I was able to maintain, being a small child with no obligations, my memories of that time are extremely vivid, particularly in the shape of the street, the positions (and colors) of the houses, the vast, green “common ground” located at the end of the street and the general proportions of things.
My first walk down Bradington Drive in October made me really just how big–and old–I’d gotten.
Is it just me, or does that building in the distance strongly resemble a UFO?
It wasn’t until I traversed the whole length of a street that seemed to stretch on for days–and as far as the eye could see–in a matter of minutes, or until I climbed up the formerly Everest-like slope that led up to the backyard-sized common ground that I realize how much my scope of size and dimension had grown. What shocked me, if I’m honest, is the extent to which I did remember angle and color–and how little most of the colors seemed to have faded since the last time I paid any great deal of attention to the street, which was only weeks after Bill Clinton was elected and five years before my family would purchase our first computer. The common ground, overgrown without my father or one of his comrades to tame its grassy forest, was a more emerald that I’d ever remembered it, my former house more buttercup (or even butterscotch)–though our front yard, in which I could play, uninterrupted, for hours upon hours, seemed small enough to traverse in just a couple steps. Oddly, I did remember the company the people who moved into our worked for, and it seemed–based on the logo slapped on the back of their vehicle–that they still lived there.
Anyone care to superimpose One Metropolitan Square onto this image, for comparison?
I had a similar moment of realization here in Shanghai on Monday when I ascended up one of 97 elevators that operate inside Shanghai’s World Financial Center, a behemoth more than three times taller than St. Louis’s One Metropolitan Square, where my father worked until about 2001 and which was, for the bulk of my single-digit years, the tallest building in my known universe. He’d sometimes take my sister and I with him on Saturdays (while he was doing extra work). If I remember correctly, we’d only ascend one of its six fake gold-plated elevators to the 25th floor or so, but I felt like I was literally on top of the world as I sprinted through the cubicles and plate-glass partitions that separated the workspaces of people at a company that no longer exists. I’d be lying if I said those days weren’t in the back of my mind as I stared down on a city of 20 million from the (current) second-tallest building in the world.
To think that I’m lucky enough to spend my 25th birthday relaxing on a semi-deserted Thai island and taking in Angkor Wat, an ancient Cambodian city and one of the best-preserved relics of the pre-Columbian world–I remember when just headed two hours southwest of St. Louis to a town called Cherryville, located along the banks of the Huzzah River and Dry Creek, was considered a tropical vacation, the (then) big crawfish and sunfish and minnows mysterious sea creatures that I could only dream of most of the year. It’s crazy for me to realize that it’s been almost two decades since those summers, when my “social network” was only as big as my family and a few kids at school, and the world stopped just past a town called Cuba, MO, whose Wal-Mart supercenter stamped out any threat of communism. Holy $#!+–I’m old!
Someone offered to take us for a ride in their janky-looking boat, but I don't swim in toilets, so I said no.
Because I live on the 23rd floor (and because my building’s elevators tend to descend like Homer Simpson falling down a staircase: hitting every damn step on the way down), my primary course of action upon reaching the bottom is usually to push my way first out of the elevator and then through the mob of people trying to make their way inside the proverbial cattle car. Today was no exception to that rule.
It's pretty cool to look down on the what was, six years ago, the World's tallest building.
And then someone tapped me on the shoulder.
He was a reserved, unassuming man, probably in his 70s. He pulled me into a small office, which was furnished with a hotplate, a rice cooker, enough paper to ignite the whole building and a desk, on top of which was a small cardboard box. “Nǐ de?” he asked, lifting it up.
Whether he was tipped off by the English writing or whether this kind, old man (who, as it turns out, is one of the building’s managers) is actually a stalker is anyone’s guess. In any case, I responded “dui,” signed for the box, and carried it with me as I walked out of the building at a much slower pace than I normally would, my mind all-of-a-sudden calmer and more present than it had been coming down the elevator shaft.
It's funny to me that the Chinese celebrate "Spring Festival" in February, given that it will no doubt be at least as cold then as it is now, here in Shanghai anyway.
I ripped the tape off the top of the box as I headed toward the Metro station, opening the card before traversing Yongjia Road, reading its touching words as I dodged cars, bikes and motorcycles in the street and on the sidewalk alike. While the card will surely go in my “Box of Cards I’ll Keep Forever,” it was the gift itself that touched me in a way I can describe as both peculiar and perfect. You see, despite my skinniness, which I exaggerate whenever possible by wearing extra-small clothing that still manages to fit loosely, members of my family still choose to buy me extra-large t-shirts and other clothing items, for a reason that completely evades me. With this bit of knowledge, I’ve decided that I like the phrase “Nothing says family like an oversized t-shirt”.
This soup was made with soft tofu and small shrimp with eyes, two things I've previously sworn against. As can be expected in the case of dramatic aversion, it was actually pretty amazing.
After a few tears, I put the card away and used my other hand to remove her gift: an extra-large t-shirt, black and bearing the logo of Costa Rica’s national beer. Dora, if you’re reading this, I love you—and I’m happy to welcome you to the family!
It’s ironic the extent to which a simple tap on the shoulder shook me from inside my own head, placing me directly into that particular moment. This is turn, led to the rest of my day being joyful and stress-free.
They don't cal...er, I don't call myself "Mister Shanghai" for nothing.
Today, in its joyfulness and freedom-from-stress, also acted as a perfect counterpoint to yesterday, which I spent in Pudong with my colleague Douglas. After months of admiring it from afar, I finally ascended the World Financial Center and was afforded the unobstructed Shanghai panorama of which I’ve been dreaming since long before I moved here.
Today, my friend Jun accompanied me to Zhūjiājiǎo, an ancient “water town” located in the Western outskirts of Shanghai. A beautiful relic of China’s lost past, all decked out in red lanterns for the upcoming Chinese New Year and Spring Festival, the pivot from state-of-the-art to art-of-the-state in just 24 hours reminded me just how lucky I am to be exactly where I am right now.
Does PETA transliterate into Chinese?
Yesterday, I ate lunch in a kitschy “Italian” restaurant and spent my afternoon is the world’s now second-highest observation deck; today, I dined on steamed pig knuckles while strolling over waterways that have been used for urban transportation since centuries before steel was even invented. Yesterday, I was harassed by leggy Shanghainese girls dressed like futuristic nurses to have a professional photo shot in front of Shanghai’s skyline; today I had to ward off a stumpy eighty-something who was trying to pawn off perfectly-good goldfish and to be let loose in Zhūjiājiǎo’s aforementioned canals. Scenic as they are, one minute under the surface of their filthy water would mean certain death for the poor fishies. Sounds a lot like the popular “toilet burial” we favor back home, you know, minus the ceremonial flush, or the prior loss of life to necessitate it.
The "observation deck," known from the ground as "the floor above the hole in the building".
In other news, I’ve accepted a part-time blogging internship at Shanghaiist, a popular Shanghai lifestyle blog operating under the same umbrella as New York’s Gothamist and Austin’s Austinist. Being the new kid on the block, I’m mostly working on news stories for now, emphasis on mostly. Sure enough, I just glanced at the time, and it’s about ten minutes shy of a phone interview I’m doing for my first feature, which should be live on the site by Friday.
I’m gonna go, you know, attend to responsibilities now, but do yourself a favor and add Shanghaiist to your bookmarks. It features a great, great team of writers, an endless stream of thought-provoking content and a Shanghai slant that’s un-slanted enough to enjoy without being here—which is not to say you shouldn’t! Indeed, few of you have expressed interest in visiting, and I hope you follow through—I’d really hate to have to guess your T-shirt size, in spite of the familial love such a gesture might convey, coming from me.
People live to be so old in China that they turn into trees--or so says the security guard at the Retirement Community where this photo was taken.
If you were ever lucky enough to visit any of my Austin apartments, you’ll know that location is of the utmost importance to me when selecting a residence. As I alluded to in the post I made immediately after securing my current pad, my location is incredible–almost untouchable. The exit gate of my courtyard is directly across the street from the entrance to the Metro, by which it takes me 11 minutes to get to People’s Square, Shanghai’s busy central subway junction. This labyrinth opens up (among other places) into the basement of a mall that happens to be right across the street from my workplace. It literally takes me longer to get from the 23rd floor to the ground in the morning than I spend outside on most days. It should come as no surprise, then, that I rarely, if ever, mention weather on this blog, despite my general hatred of all things cold.
This post will be different.
Tough or not, that's a beautiful effin' steak.
When I arrived in Shanghai, I was shocked that it was not only not cold (keep in mind this was November in the sort-of northern part of the Northern Hemisphere), but muggy, at times even hot. This delightful (for freaks like me) weather lasted all of two days, after which the temperature dropped pretty much permanently below 45° F, never to ascend again, apparently. According to most people who’ve been in Shanghai longer than I have (i.e. the whole city), this winter has been cold to a degree far surpassing “uncharacteristic”–some go so far as to say it’s unheard of. In any case, I haven’t harped on Mother Nature much because of my aforementioned bomb-ass location.
If "grimey coat" is not your cup of tea, please try the fish.
What's funny about this is that if a dirty coat had been found hanging from a tree in, say, Detroit, "murder" would be the first word to come to mind.
But it was warm on my days off this week!
In addition watching people (and their granny panties) enjoy the day I was enjoying so much, I was privileged to finish off my Tuesday at Latitude, the kind-of overpriced “French” “Bistro”–just a 10-minute walk from my three-times-this-post-mentioned bomb-ass location–where Laura (also known as “the second person I met in Shanghai”) was celebrating her second 21st birthday. Offering a three-course set menu with two choices for each course, Latitude provided me my first steak experience in Shanghai, a medium-rare, surprisingly (but not meal-ruiningly) tough 8 (or so) oz. filet, preceded by an “authentic” French onion soup served with a cracker equal to it in volume and finished off with a delicate lavender cheesecake.
While they were a little too neutral for my taste, Latitude's cream-colored wall provided a fantastic backdrop for self-timed photos. Don't you think?
While there is no doubt in my mind that lavender fields adorn the meadows of Provence and Bordeaux, it’s relatively common knowledge that the French consider any combination of “cheese” and “cake” to be sacrilegious. Nice try, Latitude! In your defense, it was friggin’ amazing.
What’s not amazing, however, is that the change in weather back to the nearly-freezing temperatures of yesterweek has created an ominous itching in my throat. I have a suspicion that a full-on cold will come soon, if it’s not already here. I sneeze enough during my classes today that even low-level students (who tend to answer “yes” or “no” to questions like “What is your name?” and “What type of music do you like?”) were saying “bless you” to me.
Having a cold in a cold city would be unforgivable if I wasn’t able to pimp my bomb-ass location at least five times in one blog post.
Nom nom nom. Shame I probably won't have a birthday cake this year. Oh well, such is the price of spending one's birthday on a secluded island in the Gulf of Thailand!
It’s hard to believe that one year ago Friday I was stripping out of a dirty, food-smelling white uniform in a frigid parking garage after getting ass-raped by my former employer. The second part of that sentence was figurative. Thank you.
Ladies, I feel the same way about that bridge. They sell puppies on it, for God's sake!
It was actually on Saturday that I realized the big “3-6-5″ had come and gone, January 2009 being the third in a trilogy of shitty months that just about did me in. It’s strange for me to think that I’m on the other side of the world from all that now, which is not to say that every day is a happy day with gumdrop rain and a honey sun–far from it. I suppose my particular journey has more in common with our planet’s recently-completed revolution around the sun than the spinning of the Earth itself, a year of what was first uncertainty and now a kind of caged-in spontaneity ranging from liberating to maddening to debilitating to paralyzing and now back to being liberating again, minus the fact that I’m tied once again to a huge, multinational company. The things we do for life!
And you thought they left Christmas decorations up too long in Fenton, MO. To be fair, the non-reindeer component of this display is for the Chinese New Year next month.
Speaking of life, I had a delightful couple of days Friday and Saturday. During my lunch break Friday I took a breakneck-speed shopping trip to Qipu Lu. After days of wondering how much I needed a certain couple of Mister Rogers cardigans, I decided that the answer was “more than I need to wonder any longer,” and took off toward a destination which was much more distant on my working day than it had seemed on my day off. I strolled back into work at the last possible second after (literally) running for most of the journey itself.
The lights of Huaihai Lu.
She didn't mind me taking her picture when I told her I would buy some of her strawberries-on-a-stick!
Saturday saw me accompany a small country’s worth of teachers and students first to Windows on Huaihai and then to Muse at Park 97, a semi-douchey spot located literally inside a park. The occasion was two birthdays, one student’s and one teacher’s. About an hour before I headed home, we managed to score a VIP room in Muse’s basement, complete with a personal karaoke machine, free-flow bourbon and a strangely delicious green tea birthday cake of which I got to eat a disproportionate percentage, being the only partygoer sober enough to use silverware without needing a trip to the hospital. Sadly, the karaoke portion of our VIP room was dominated by a former student who dazzled us with “sentimental rock” favorites that were last heard on Hong Kong airwaves in the mid-80′s.
Let me be perfectly clear, though: I’d rather hear Britney Spears burp into a microphone all night, every night than ever go back to where I was one year ago, so God Bless Cantonese lite-FM.
Though I already kind of touched on the topic last week, I feel compelled amid the recent Google hoopla to once again offer my viewpoint from inside China, since most of the criticism of my current home country seems to be coming from outside–and by “side” I mean “other side of the planet”.
In addition to Google’s threat to pull its China product and operation, China currently lacks representation by facebook, YouTube or twitter, a status quo that is, in the West, largely attributed to crackdown on personal freedom following uprisings–such as the one in, say, Ürümqi last July, which saw communication in and out of the northwestern Chinese city limited to text message. Totally fucked up–I won’t argue that. In the sea of buzzwords, however, that surround this latest controversy–namely Tiananmen, Olympics and “human rights”–there are three that seem to be missing: Baidu, Youku and Kaixin, the respective Chinese-grown counterparts to Google, YouTube and myspace/facebook/twitter. In other words, the “war” the West seems to think China has started over information has little to do with allowing or not allowed Michael or Susie to have his or her opinion.
It’s about capitalism, people.
How would Americans feel if Baidu (a search engine which allows users–among other cool shit–to access web-hosted mp3s of every song on the internet at the touch of a button, without fear of retribution) set up shop stateside? First, they would fill up their iPods. Then, they’d throw a middle class housewife (or two) in jail for dramatic effect.
And then they would create something of their own to rival it and do anything in their power to drive Baidu out.
I’m not trying to hate on America or cheer for China, but I’ve gotta be honest: apart from the Qipu Road incident with the angry bathroom attendant and the broom, I haven’t felt my “human rights” threatened here. I haven’t seen any signs of a recession. And aside from the occasional homeless dude in the subway, I haven’t noticed anybody obviously unemployed.
And I haven’t heard anybody of Chinese descent complain about Google’s impending departure, either. As my Chinese improves slowly but steadily, I’m able to discern nuggets of meaning and intention in the sea of speech around me, and what I’m hearing now seems to be a collective “don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out!”
Spoken like true Americans!
I think I'm correct to assume that the cartoon characters on the header of this notepad indicate it's meant for children.
I was always very gifted at multiple choice tests in school, having deduced and reasoned my way to countless “A” grades and, in the case of Advanced Placement tests, to sophomore standing upon entering college. As such, I feel a multiple choice question is a great way to begin this entry.
Yesterday (Tuesday), I, Robert, did all of the following except:
(a) Eat cherries on a stick covered in hard candy coating
(b) Enjoy dinner at a classy Xi Bei Restaurant, complete with authentic dancing and horse meat
(c) Experience my first day shopping at Qipu (pronounce “cheap-oo”) Road
(d) Get assaulted with a broom by a bathroom attendant
(e) Break my vow never to eat seafood in Shanghai again–with tentacles!
If you chose (a), you’re absolutely right: they were strawberries.
Yes, horse meat.
To be chronological, I began my day yesterday, well the part that occurred after my crack-of-dawn Chinese class, anyway, with a trip to the stationery store, where I picked up square-covered paper to aid me in proper formation of the Chinese characters I’ve been learning since last week. Accompanied by Laura and Dave as I walked down Fuzhou Lu back toward my workplace, I was faced with a dilemma: head back to said workplace on my day off to study Chinese with Dave, or head to Qipu Road with Laura to experience what is allegedly the best shopping in Shanghai. After not much deliberation, I chose the latter. With that, Laura and I headed north and then east.
No, pretty lady, I will not, under any circumstance, dance with you. Sorry!
The walk to Qipu Lu from People’s Square would be pleasant on a day with, well, pleasant weather, but being that it was barely above freezing yesterday, I can cite only the pace (breakneck) at which we were moving as reason for not being miserable. After heading north for about 15 minutes, crossing the Shanxi Road bridge until we reached Qipu itself, we headed eastward. Though Qipu Road itself is long and filled with shops of all kinds, its famous markets are actually located at its intersection with another road (whose name I didn’t happen to jot down), marked by a massive pedestrian bridge that’s nearly too congested to cross–and where puppies are sold freely. Laura and I meandered down the non-famous section of the road, snacking on grilled tentacles–complete with suction cups!–en route. After warding off a couple hustlers who just couldn’t get the message that we weren’t into designer fakes or expensive watched, we crossed the bridge to what may well be the simultaneous best and worst shopping I’ve ever experienced in my life–Dora, you would love this. The selection was incredible, both from an aesthetic standpoint as well as tangibly, and the prices–once, of course, you haggle each seller to about 20% of his or her starting point–can’t be beat, truly living up to the Anglicized name of the street on which the market is located. The quality and fit of the garments, however, left something to be desired, so big a something, in fact, that I chose not to buy even a single one of them. I did–in Chinese, I might add–help Laura obtain three dresses and a woolen hat of some kind, but not before being chased–and briefly assaulted–by a manic Chinese woman with a broom, for not dropping one yuan into her bucket as I entered the filthy public restroom. To be honest, I wasn’t trying to be cheap or shady–I just assumed the purple pail held cleaning solution and not peoples’ dirty money.
Hey Dora, remember how you said what you wanted most, at one time, was a super-gaudy chandelier? I think I found one for you!
Somewhere between my caning and trying desperately to find something great to buy in a sea of “almost good enough,” I reunited with Laura. After grabbing some candy-coated strawberries–which were beyond delicious, delectable, or any other “taste” adjective I currently know in how otherworldly (and amazing!) their crunchy, candy coatings were as compared to the cool chewiness of the berries themselves–we headed back across puppy dog bridge, managing somehow not to get pickpocketed. We made a quick pit stop at a Chinese fruit market (where I picked up some of the delightful pears I mentioned in the last entry), and headed back to our respective apartments to prepare for dinner with the rest of our Chinese-learning comrades at Yakexi, an upscale Xi Bei restaurant located near Down Home Shanghai, the shithole whose “ink fish” ruined my Christmas. I should say “I” instead of “we” because Laura skipped out on dinner.
What can I say? Cold weather calls for sweater-vests.
In any case, the dinner itself was incredible. Highlights included (but were not limited to) watching several of my colleagues be humiliated by a dancing lady in pretty, ethnic garb who pulled them to the center of the dining room in their casual Western outfits, Sinkiang, a self-proclaimed “black beer” native to Northwest China’s Xin Jiang province, and horse meat–specifically smoked horse meat, a carpaccio-thin hors d’ouevres that tasted like a smokier, squishier beef jerky. To be honest, it wasn’t bad. In fact, had I not known I was dining on Black Beauty, I might have enjoyed it. If we’re talking the pop culture of yesterday, though, I gladly preferred nibbling on Lambchop’s ribs, which were cut so thick they might as well have been served in Texas. The dining portion of dinner dwindled to a conversation that meandered from travel plans to ice festivals to ice skating extravaganzas to space flight and then, finally, to a taxi ride home with my wonderful Chinese teacher Coco, who apparently wants to learn French as badly as I want to better my Chinese.
I think I smell a language exchange!
These small, strange, pear-like fruits sold in Chinese markets are like Granny Smith apples (tart) crossed with watermelon (juicy to the point of dripping) crossed with a sugar cube (need I explain)? Not sure how I'll live without these post-China!
Shucks! I’ve been having so much fun with food-borne illness, technological nightmares and sightseeing like a Japanese tourist (in America) that I forgot to commemorate January 7, which marked the two-month mark since my arrival in Shanghai. Expectedly, Thursday also marked the one-month mark since my one-month mark, and I’m shocked how much has changed since then–and how dramatically.
Yes, those are Chinese characters I'm writing. Note the blatant homophobia in the word "hao," which means "good": its character, 好, is the combination of "girl" and "boy". Forget New Jersey, China's been at this shit for millenia!
It seems like just yesterday I was struggling to order Peking Duck, count to ten and exit a taxi without banging on its window or tapping its driver on his or her shoulder. I’m happy to report that I can not only say a whole hell of a lot more–including, but not limited to, “there is a bank opposite the school,” “I have a fever,” “please give me a receipt,” “turn left at the stoplight,” and “How does your younger sister like her new job?”–but I’ve also begun the process of learning to write Chinese characters, a process which is not only easier than I thought it would be, but way more fun. It’s a cross between the impressive (for a first-grader) sketches I used to do during my single-digit years and the margin-doodles that defined most of my schooling post-2000. The best part is that a good chunk of Chinese words and phrases are built (I’m told) using a combination of about 200 common characters. I currently know about 25, so in no time I should be able to begin reading signs, children’s stories and websites. Exciting times.
Forget energy efficiency! Here in China, we make a point of installing unnecessary lighting.
It also seems–and I hope I’m not cursing myself here–that my Christmas surprise may have purged what was left of my maladjustment to Shanghai, from a dietary perspective. Since that harrowing night, I’ve felt consistently more energetic, happy and able to withstand most all the food I’ve eaten–and some of it’s been pretty sketch, if I’m honest! Kumquats are sold everywhere here. Given their God-given snack size, I can’t particularly be bothered to wash them. Tuesday will see me accompany my Chinese teacher and classmates to a Xi Bei (西北) restaurant quite near the place I came into contact with the aforementioned stomach virus. I’m hoping it’s not something in the water.
I wish pictures could convey how tall this thing is.
I was feeling strangely energetic after Chinese class today. Though I’ve been picking up a fair amount of the material I’ve learned thus far, it was only a few days ago that I began feeling what I would term “very” confident about my progress. I suppose if you throw enough shit at a wall, it will eventually have nothing to do but stick. To illustrate this phenomenon, I got my first Chinese haircut last night, and my stylist didn’t speak a word of English, besides “wax” and “buy from me”. To be fair, my Chinese primarily consisted of “Wo shi lao shi” (I’m a teacher), “zhe ge, zhe li” (that one, there), “duan/chang” (short/long), “hen hao!” (that’s great!) and fragments of that sort. At its root (no pun intended), however, language is about communication, and in that regard I succeeded. A picture of the ‘do should appear somewhere in this post.
Freedom? That's just som...er, no people talking. Or moving. Or existing.
In any case, I’ve been sidetracked from my original point, which is the strange energy I felt following another very successful Chinese class, an energy which led me to answer “why, of course” when my classmate Dave posed a bizarre question to me at the coffee machine.
“Why don’t we get on one of the Metro lines and ride it until the end?”
"Well hello. I'm the happy Expo worker standing next to the Expo sign. And that's the rest of Lujiazui."
As chance would have it, we took line 6, themed in a luscious Pepto Bismol pink. We were intending on riding it to its terminal station which, according to the map, was Gangcheng Road, a lonely outpost close to the sea, but it was not meant to be: the train stopped at Jufeng Road, whose surroundings included a Holiday Inn Express, a Carrefour and a bridge painted in matching upset stomach pink. In lieu of waiting in the freezing cold for the next train in the other direction, we opted to get out and explore.
And that's about the extent of Shanghai's outskirts, emphasis on "extent".
Interestingly enough, it was just yesterday I did what I intended to do when I got sidetracked by a Century 21 logo the day after I arrived here: explore Pudong, namely the World Financial Center and its surrounding skyscrapers. Yesterday was quite miserable (though not nearly as cold), and I spent close to an hour hanging out in the Expo-themed new park surrounding the base of the WFC (and neighbor Jin Mao), a park which was more than likely not meant to be open to the public just yet. As Dave and I wandered down the largely deserted, open streets surrounding Jufeng Road, I was alarmed by the contrast the empty businesses, cookie-cutter apartment compounds and overall calm provided to the “supertall” buildings of Lujiazui, some of which are three times higher than Austin’s Frost Bank Tower. To be fair, I did not encounter the kind of bustle one would expect at the base of six hundred-story buildings yesterday. Still, the scene up north today was almost alien.
Shanghai's answer to the "Twin Towers"--the World Financial Center and the Jin Mao Building.
And, oddly enough, far more what I was expecting Shanghai to be like. As I’ve mentioned many times before on this blog, the extent to which Shanghai is Western is almost disturbing, and the tenement-rich, almost-shanty-towns surrounding the terminus of metro line 6 seemed much more–how do I put this, East Asian? Dave, who recently finished a year stint teaching in the countryside surrounding Seoul, remarked that it reminded him of Korea.
Oh, steak. Make love to my duodenum.
Prior to riding the rails back to the comforts of civilization, Dave and I found the grub for which we’d hungered since leaving this morning, in the form of Hao Xiang Lai, a “Western restaurant” (whose name means Come Enjoy Good)–complete with English-language menus. The staff, fortunately, didn’t speak English, which left us free to practice our Mandarin with the sullen-looking waitress girl. We successfully ordered two “Black Pepper Steak” lunch sets, which were each served in skillets (think the latest gimmick at Denny’s) full of delectable, slightly sticky sauce with an over easy egg and fusilli with tomato sauce. They were preceded by fresh garden vegetables covered in mayonnaise (in other words, inedible), seafood soup (learned my lesson last time) and a shot of something that tasted like cough syrup. We enjoyed this hearty meal, as well as a large bottle of Tsingtao each, for 40 yuan per person–or, roughly, $6. Not bad! The protein was welcome.
You likey?
Speaking of gluttony, the past three days have provided a feast of contrasts, that’s for sure, from the neon fountains and Christmas lights of People’s Square to the mega skyscrapers of Pudong’s Lujiazui District to the almost South Korean outpost by the sea with its Denny’s-like “Western” restaurant. I’d like to head to Shanghai’s quaint neighbor city Hangzhou in the relatively near future, but until then, I think I can manage exploring regions nearer–but oddly more remote.
Now, if global warming would hurry up and get rid of this stupid winter…
The only context in which "green" is understood in China is if it describes the color of megawatt neon signs.
“Who are these people?” I asked my “Cultural Focus” class of twenty-five students, pointing to the several stick figures I drawn to sit alongside a Picasso-quality courtroom scene that featured, among other things, a smiling judge with a blue wig. “I’ll give you a hint: the name given to them is singular”.
Some crickets chirped and when they stopped, there was silence. And then I drew four short lines on the board. As I was finishing up the gallows for a festive game of “Hangman,” a student blurted out. “Is that the ‘jury’?”
“Yes! Gold star for you,” I said, as I do. “And Colin, what does the jury do?”
You see what I'm saying? Not that I'm complaining--nowhere in the United States can I play on a fluorscent fountain playground at night, that's for sure.
More crickets. More silence. And a very ironic execution scene drawn on the board in a style matching that of the courtroom already there. I re-phrased my question in a more “concept-checking” way. “What does the jury decide?”
“Death!” shouted someone.
“Well,” I said, “the death penalty is an example of a punishment, but the jury doesn’t decide that. Who decides that?”
“The judge?” she said, looking around at her glass-eyed classmates. “Is the judge?”
“Yes,” I said. “So, if the judge decides only the punishment, what must the jury decide?”
“Guilty!” someone else shouted, grinning ear-to-ear. They’re having a lot of fun with this, I thought.
It reminds me of one of those 80's arcade games where you have to step on the panel as it lights up.
As it turns out, the reason Chinese students don’t know a jury from a judge from a verdict from a sentence is that justice lies in the hand of a single entity in Chinese courtrooms–and most Chinese people, those I’ve spoken with anyway, are fine with it that way. It’s true that the Chinese system sometimes–and to much publicity–goes awry. Other times, the severity and swiftness of punishments and their handing down are more welcome. Whereas corporate crooks in the US are rewarded with accolades and magazine covers, the Chinese have proven, in one case specifically, to have a functioning moral compass when it comes to business, if one that’s a little bit Old Testament: last year, two Chinese milk industry executives were executed after overseeing a “cost cutting” measure which entailed diluting milk to yield more product–with paint thinner. Whereas such behavior in America would have seen the kingpins disappear behind the scenes and be replaced with other elitist “yes” men, the perpetrators retreating to some tropical island with millions in pensions, stock options and cash, vanishing from public view and, more than likely, punishment entirely, China brought these assholes to justice just ten months after their trial. While Amnesty International and other watchdog groups condemned the punishment of the men, whose actions led to sickness for 300,000 babies and the deaths of six, its starkness and expedience serves as reminder that, above all, China means business.
You know that picture of Jack Kerouac on Lonesome Traveler? Well, this is me trying to take that picture from 1953 into 2010, especially the deep-set eyes.
And this isn’t always a scary thing!
Forget punishment for tainting milk or smuggling drugs, I'm afraid of crossing the street in China!
As someone who abides by the rules, life in China seems, to be nearly identical to life in the United States. Aside from reduced access to Facebook, YouTube, twitter and other entertainment, social freedom is left relatively intact. With the economy booming, more Chinese are at liberty to take greater advantage of this freedom–the emerging Chinese middle class is both in number and wealth approaching that of America as a whole. Never once in my time here have I so much as been approached by a police officer or felt less than perfectly free to do anything I pleased. It’s true: I live in Shanghai, mainland China’s most exterior and open city, economically, socially and otherwise. But what is to be said of, say, New York City, when compared to Westboro, Kansas, home of world-renowned religious extremists or Jena, LA, where racial prejudice supersedes common sense? Given these stateside polarities, it’s not too far-fetched to understand how a place like Shanghai could exist in the same country as, say, Ürümqi, whose communication with the world outside itself had up until recently been limited to the text message (i.e. no phone calls or internet of any sort) after recent uprisings.
This building looks much more...dramatic during the day, though not, admittedly, as red.
Like the idea that a small group of ordinary people are more fit to decide someone’s fate than a single iron fist, the concept of choosing elected officials is also unknown to most Chinese people–and like not having juries to check and balance their judges, this void is also, largely a non-issue.
“Our system,” said a higher-level student of mine when we were discussing “deep” matters one morning over coffee, “works for us. It wouldn’t work for everybody. But it’s fine here. Things are going well here”.
I seriously can't get enough of that fountain. I should go visit every night!
It’s true–the recession has, for all intents and purposes, missed China, and while some argue that a credit crunch similar to the one stateside will soon batter China’s emerging middle class, it is largely understood that the Communist party–who allows the economy to function in a manner which is mostly capitalist–will ensure the brunt of said storm, if it comes, is minimal, and easy for its people to manage. Truth be told, voting in America is mostly ornamental. With the post-election revelation in 2008 that the Presidential campaign that years was the costliest in history at $5.3 billion, it’s foolish, at best, to assume that any candidates put up for a vote will be in it for anything other than lobbyist dollars. And while the interests supported by the Chinese government are often called into question by people in the West, the dominance of a single interest pushes out most special interest, so it becomes, then, an issue of “lesser evils”.
The lights of Huahai Road--from the middle of the crosswalk with five seconds remaning.
“This will be a great decade,” Bill Maher, one of my favorite funnymen, reportedly began a New Year’s Eve toast. He finished: “For China.” While I doubt China will be lifting it’s single-child limitations or legalizing gay marriage between now and 2019, its government is without doubt going to have as its chief concern the prosperity of its breadwinners–its huge, ever growing middle class–which is something that our corporate-controlled “free” market has proven incapable of doing. I would like to have hope that the U.S. can push close the gates of the three ring circus of big business, big government and big media, but with our latest fleecing by Team Obama and the teleprompter express, my faith is dwindling.
Thankfully, China’s symbolic ownership of the United States should become tangible sooner rather than later. Maybe there will be two-for-one specials on “Made in China” tattoos. Who wants to go halfsies with me?
