My view of the Olympic opening ceremony was at 140 degrees to a giant LCD screen partially blocked by rigging and lighting equipment. Yes, I was in Beijing, and no, I didn't even see so much as fireworks overhead that night.
I had returned to the hotel that week at the Chinese University of Mining Technology. It took some effort to find it at this point since I had been using all the construction sites as landmarks back in June and I was disoriented when I alit from the metro. No sun was in the sky that week to help either; the night of the ceremony swirled around in a haze the color of oyster flesh as my comrades and I schlepped back from a plaza on the southeast end of town.
The idea- I suppose it had started as one - was to take one of the brand spanking new subway lines to this area which boasted the largest television screen in all of Asia. The ceremony was starting just as we got on the train in freaking Wudaokou and Jacob would poke his head out the doors at every station to see how it was progressing. I'm still blaming him for this though I couldn't let my irritation show as he, his Lebanese girlfriend and Scottish labmate were all good company. It took us well over an hour to arrive at our stop, and perhaps thirty minutes of wandering before we discovered the Herculean display proudly scrolling nothing more than a Coca Cola ad the size of a football field. At the other end of the screen were more smaller screens that were clearly aimed at people who had paid money to sit in front of them. All the songs, acts and pageantry were over and we had to content ourselves standing on the outskirts watching the countries file into the Bird's Nest whilst drinking eight dollar Coronas.
As underwhelming as that experience had been there were plenty of adventures that occupied the other students. Three of them recounted their electric bicycle trip that past Sunday through the Olympic village. They successfully evaded four checkpoints by claiming over their shoulders that they were local residents and made it as far as the new six star hotel a caber toss from the Bird's Nest. That's where they stopped for lunch.
These students were blessed with an inordinate amount of luck to complement their chutzpah. The hotel hadn't really opened yet but was left with a sizeable staff puttering out in the lobby who were more than happy to show the American tourists up to the penthouse restaurant. That far into the building of course had been constructed right up until when the government threw the no-building switch and thus many features were missing. Like wiring and walls and so forth.
The hoteliers didn't have the menu prepared yet so the Americans guessed at dishes until they got lucky with dim sum and broccoli.
When I heard about this escapade on that Thursday I was glad that I had just eaten and that any jealousy-producing enzymes were concerned instead with digesting my vegetarian entrees. Lucky bastards.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
So it's 4:00 freaking a.m....
...and I can't freaking sleep. I came back two nights ago and I'm at my family's home in Georgia and I have an awful lot to write about though my thoughts are disorganized so for the time being I'm just going to upload pictures. August turned out to be more busy than any August ever had a right to be. Ask someone what I'm doing they'll say, "Oh, he's dealing with August"...August, August Wilson oh God now I'm remembering high school drama class and I can't freaking sleep I'm freaking OUT
So anyway, there will be pictures this evening. Then more stuff.
So anyway, there will be pictures this evening. Then more stuff.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Sweet, Sweet Chinese Cuisine
I had this donut for breakfast at the hotel we stayed at last week. I'm honestly at a loss to explain this one but I'm looking forward to when we can import these to America.
Bai Juyi's Top Ten
Until the British started using it for their opium port in the mid-nineteenth century, Shanghai was a minor Chinese city without historical significance. I haven't seen much in the way of ancient architecture and even the Jing-An temple is underwhelming compared to, say, New York's Metropolitan Library. The oldest neighborhoods along the river bank are neat but they're hardly in good shape and many are being demolished to prepare for the World Expo (hosted by none other than Toothpaste Man).
Because nothing says innovation like dental hygiene...
So there's an attitude that I vibe from the locals where they've evolved to a higher mental state, the sort that comes from years of hanging around coffeehouses before being picked by your dad to manage his air conditioner factory. Which isn't quite as bad as New Yorkers who get picked by their dad to manage other people's hedge funds, but it's the same idea. Wait, come to think of it, they have hedge funds here too.
But there's a city about 170 km to the west whose glories stretch back to the invention of rice, where gods and goddesses walked among men and divulged their secrets to the worthy. This is Hangzhou which, during three hundred years of the medieval era, was the largest city in the world with well over a million people. Today it still has a very cool lake that Lin and I visited last week.
The area was cultivated over the centuries by different governors and emperors and most recently by Mao Zedong. One of them was Bai Juyi, who had a half dozen other aliases and certainly some wicked special moves in Soul Caliber IV. He wrote the official poetry travel guide to the lake and enumerated ten scenes that were to be considered the most sublime, as in under the citrus. I recall that one of them required snowfall and another one required a harvest moon. I don't remember what the rest were but I took enough photos that I certainly pegged one by accident. Ohk, now I remember the rustling lotus blossoms that we encountered. Those were on the list.
It was a very hot day that we rode around the lake. The humidity wasn't stifling but by the time we made it halfway around I realized that I'd spent nearly thirty yuan just on liquids. We explored a bit of the hills and came across a grotto clustered with locals. They were happily lying on blankets, playing cards in the shade. It seemed a whole lot more comfortable than a day at the beach.
For the most part I've been taking it easy until my professor and my coworkers return from their vacations. After I return to Beijing next week I'll have more time to travel and I'm currently deciding between the Yunnan highlands or the Borneo jungle. It's about time I had a vacation where I packed a machete and a flare gun.
Because nothing says innovation like dental hygiene...So there's an attitude that I vibe from the locals where they've evolved to a higher mental state, the sort that comes from years of hanging around coffeehouses before being picked by your dad to manage his air conditioner factory. Which isn't quite as bad as New Yorkers who get picked by their dad to manage other people's hedge funds, but it's the same idea. Wait, come to think of it, they have hedge funds here too.
But there's a city about 170 km to the west whose glories stretch back to the invention of rice, where gods and goddesses walked among men and divulged their secrets to the worthy. This is Hangzhou which, during three hundred years of the medieval era, was the largest city in the world with well over a million people. Today it still has a very cool lake that Lin and I visited last week.
The area was cultivated over the centuries by different governors and emperors and most recently by Mao Zedong. One of them was Bai Juyi, who had a half dozen other aliases and certainly some wicked special moves in Soul Caliber IV. He wrote the official poetry travel guide to the lake and enumerated ten scenes that were to be considered the most sublime, as in under the citrus. I recall that one of them required snowfall and another one required a harvest moon. I don't remember what the rest were but I took enough photos that I certainly pegged one by accident. Ohk, now I remember the rustling lotus blossoms that we encountered. Those were on the list.
It was a very hot day that we rode around the lake. The humidity wasn't stifling but by the time we made it halfway around I realized that I'd spent nearly thirty yuan just on liquids. We explored a bit of the hills and came across a grotto clustered with locals. They were happily lying on blankets, playing cards in the shade. It seemed a whole lot more comfortable than a day at the beach.
For the most part I've been taking it easy until my professor and my coworkers return from their vacations. After I return to Beijing next week I'll have more time to travel and I'm currently deciding between the Yunnan highlands or the Borneo jungle. It's about time I had a vacation where I packed a machete and a flare gun.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Dollar Medical Care
Last Wednesday I was worried that my big toenail was finally getting infected from some kind of split that I got a few weeks ago. It's summer vacation now so I figured that the campus clinic would have light waits to tend to a minor injury. Plus, I could visit the Chinese doctors and blog about it! I hobbled there before breakfast with my girlfriend who tried to explaining what I needed to know as simply as she could.
I paid the receptionist eight yuan and she handed me a pocket-sized medical chartbook that I stuffed in my back pocket along with a few other stamped receipts. My girlfriend then led me into an adjacent building whose waiting room consisted of a three-seated bench in a hall outside an administrative office. There were four other men in line with me and I was led into the office within five or six minutes. It resembled strikingly that of my high school counselor's office. Two desks were placed back to back where two women in white discussed things with three patients who sat on nearby stools. After fifteen seconds one of the patients left and I was given his seat. My sock and shoe dangled from laces in my hand while the nurse glanced at it, exchanged a few words with my girlfriend, and led me around the corner to a larger room with a table big enough to lie on that was covered in white butcher paper. So far so good.
The patients outside had been wandering around with tiny thermometers in their mouths but I was neither weighed nor pulse-checked as the nurse got straight to work. Again, there's a certain unfamiliarity with the medical system here that prevents me from calling my caretaker a doctor. She wore no nametag and I've gotten into the habit of identifying doctors by their stethoscopes and starched collars. She wore a simple white smock and spoke to me in English as she rummaged through a tin toolbox on the counter. "You're a big baby," she said, "you need a mother to cut those toenails."
"That's not something that my mother ever did," I chuckled.
"Call her up and tell her you have a new one," she squeezed my nail between a pair of scissors that would have had trouble with a manila envelope. On good days my toenails are hideous yellow crinkled scoops that I attend to with a variety of power sanders. Cutting close to the toe hurts a bit, but by the time she had cut enough away to get at the infected cut I had swooned and was delivering short, rapid breaths. The nurse administered iodine and bandaged the digit up snugly, dabbing away the fresh blood that she had spilled. I was allowed to recover in the adjacent room and while my mind was hazy at this point I don't recall her washing her hands before the next patient came through the door.
The term 'developing nation' was dropped a dozen times a day while discussing things with the Party officials and their lackeys, an asterisk that accompanied admitted moral or procedural shortcomings. But seriously, how developed do you need to be to wash your frigging hands? My mother would have washed her hands, even if she would have done it with recycled bathwater. Yeah, I know I should stop complaining and visit Wenchuan where things are now completely undeveloped.
I met a couple of Canadian folks yesterday up in Zhongshan Park at the expat coffee get-together. They'd arrived from BC on Friday and for a while I was the only other westerner they could talk to about the lay of the land. They were the classic mech-e/schoolteacher combo with matching forest green shirts and a pair of toddlers poking around. Yeah, I've been here for seventy days and I could tell them about what to pay for food, taxis, how to get around and find a good illegal cab and cheap handsome suits. I told them to enjoy the weather now that the rains had passed and the smog had yet to return. The man commented that so far the air was cleaner than he had expected.
"No, it's really not. My snot has finally turned black. Yours probably will too after a few months."
The schoolteacher blanched as she pulled her son away from the decor. "That... must have been very upsetting. To blow your nose one day and see it turn black."
"Not that upsetting. It's more of a gradual thing," I said.
I paid the receptionist eight yuan and she handed me a pocket-sized medical chartbook that I stuffed in my back pocket along with a few other stamped receipts. My girlfriend then led me into an adjacent building whose waiting room consisted of a three-seated bench in a hall outside an administrative office. There were four other men in line with me and I was led into the office within five or six minutes. It resembled strikingly that of my high school counselor's office. Two desks were placed back to back where two women in white discussed things with three patients who sat on nearby stools. After fifteen seconds one of the patients left and I was given his seat. My sock and shoe dangled from laces in my hand while the nurse glanced at it, exchanged a few words with my girlfriend, and led me around the corner to a larger room with a table big enough to lie on that was covered in white butcher paper. So far so good.
The patients outside had been wandering around with tiny thermometers in their mouths but I was neither weighed nor pulse-checked as the nurse got straight to work. Again, there's a certain unfamiliarity with the medical system here that prevents me from calling my caretaker a doctor. She wore no nametag and I've gotten into the habit of identifying doctors by their stethoscopes and starched collars. She wore a simple white smock and spoke to me in English as she rummaged through a tin toolbox on the counter. "You're a big baby," she said, "you need a mother to cut those toenails."
"That's not something that my mother ever did," I chuckled.
"Call her up and tell her you have a new one," she squeezed my nail between a pair of scissors that would have had trouble with a manila envelope. On good days my toenails are hideous yellow crinkled scoops that I attend to with a variety of power sanders. Cutting close to the toe hurts a bit, but by the time she had cut enough away to get at the infected cut I had swooned and was delivering short, rapid breaths. The nurse administered iodine and bandaged the digit up snugly, dabbing away the fresh blood that she had spilled. I was allowed to recover in the adjacent room and while my mind was hazy at this point I don't recall her washing her hands before the next patient came through the door.
The term 'developing nation' was dropped a dozen times a day while discussing things with the Party officials and their lackeys, an asterisk that accompanied admitted moral or procedural shortcomings. But seriously, how developed do you need to be to wash your frigging hands? My mother would have washed her hands, even if she would have done it with recycled bathwater. Yeah, I know I should stop complaining and visit Wenchuan where things are now completely undeveloped.
I met a couple of Canadian folks yesterday up in Zhongshan Park at the expat coffee get-together. They'd arrived from BC on Friday and for a while I was the only other westerner they could talk to about the lay of the land. They were the classic mech-e/schoolteacher combo with matching forest green shirts and a pair of toddlers poking around. Yeah, I've been here for seventy days and I could tell them about what to pay for food, taxis, how to get around and find a good illegal cab and cheap handsome suits. I told them to enjoy the weather now that the rains had passed and the smog had yet to return. The man commented that so far the air was cleaner than he had expected.
"No, it's really not. My snot has finally turned black. Yours probably will too after a few months."
The schoolteacher blanched as she pulled her son away from the decor. "That... must have been very upsetting. To blow your nose one day and see it turn black."
"Not that upsetting. It's more of a gradual thing," I said.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
The Collaboration Happy Bus of International Prosperity
About half of my funding this summer is coming from an NSF fellowship along the lines of a science project and research report. The program required me to go to Beijing a few weeks back to meet the other fellows (grantees?), take a goodwill tour of the city, and sit through what seemed like a dozen lectures on China's growing research infrastructure. And I actually had a lot of fun which was all the more unusual since I was hanging out with a bunch of Americans.
All the problems in Shanghai seem like they're multiplied in Beijing. The traffic's gnarlier with work crews, earth movers, jaywalkers and jaydrivers. There are fewer metro cars with more people packed onto them and the stations have enough crowd control barriers that it feels like navigating an ant farm. All the surfaces seem coated with grit; the air is dustier and by the end of the week I was waking up with asthma problems. Despite what I thought earlier about the construction, July 11 is the official cutoff date according to an architect friend-of-a-friend and until then crews are working nonstop.
This was all a source of pride to the government reps who greeted us the morning after our arrival. We had been bussed to a panel at seven-thirty, with most of us not getting breakfast, to attend a series of presentations where every other powerpoint slide was an exponential curve to demonstrate China's exponential-ness. I was getting edgy though and snuck out near the beginning of the third talk. It had been a few days since my last Lexapro and I needed some vodka and razor blades.
I didn't find either though I did come across a short-order place where I bought an entire basket of dumplings for four kuai, like fifty-six cents. By the time I made it back to the lecture hall the last talk was wrapping up and half the attendees were rolling their heads around on their desks.
The niftiest feature of my hotel room was that switching on the main power required inserting a dongle on the room key into a breaker slot. There was also a console built into the bedside table that controlled the AC and room lights. Supposedly no hot water was available between 10 and 5 in the afternoon though I didn't really notice if that was true. My room overlooked a chunk of campus that was unremarkable and occasionally traversed by clusters of students in their graduation gowns.
I know I'm in the habit of hating on Americans but this fellowship turned out a fine group of Yanks. The metiers weren't skewed towards engineering either-- there were linguists, geologists, a couple evolutionary biologists and a bona fide paleontologist. Within the first day or so the so-called 'dynamic' had set in. A tall, charismatic Indian mechanical engineer (I have actually met mechanical engineers who don't fit this description) revealed his past travels of the area and became the defacto student body rep (though officially this title belonged to the entomologist). He wore a different club t-shirt each day of the week and had the most exquisite eyelashes I've recalled seeing on a man.
There was a six-foot-four narrow-faced vegetarian whose studies had taken him to Iowa State, though for what I remain uncertain. The only things I know about my home state university are its condensed matter program and its prohibition of alcohol. The tall vegetarian enjoyed frisbee, knew how to juggle, and took special care to place his go stones in the proper manner between the middle and index fingers. His t-shirt proclaimed the 10th anniversary of the Onion Creek Cloggers' Festival.
For on the spot translation we relied on a USC ABC woman to communicate with clerks and a Princeton Hong Kong native to read menus. The chatty SoCal linguist and Jane Austen fan was fluent in Mandarin but couldn't read it, while the more subdued atmospheric scientist and Pink Floyd aficionado could read thousands of characters but spoke only Cantonese.
Only time prevents me from going into more detail of the personalities involved in the contingent. It was really such a full week that I knew would take several posts to recount, so if you check back later there will be more to come.
All the problems in Shanghai seem like they're multiplied in Beijing. The traffic's gnarlier with work crews, earth movers, jaywalkers and jaydrivers. There are fewer metro cars with more people packed onto them and the stations have enough crowd control barriers that it feels like navigating an ant farm. All the surfaces seem coated with grit; the air is dustier and by the end of the week I was waking up with asthma problems. Despite what I thought earlier about the construction, July 11 is the official cutoff date according to an architect friend-of-a-friend and until then crews are working nonstop.
This was all a source of pride to the government reps who greeted us the morning after our arrival. We had been bussed to a panel at seven-thirty, with most of us not getting breakfast, to attend a series of presentations where every other powerpoint slide was an exponential curve to demonstrate China's exponential-ness. I was getting edgy though and snuck out near the beginning of the third talk. It had been a few days since my last Lexapro and I needed some vodka and razor blades.
I didn't find either though I did come across a short-order place where I bought an entire basket of dumplings for four kuai, like fifty-six cents. By the time I made it back to the lecture hall the last talk was wrapping up and half the attendees were rolling their heads around on their desks.
I could have fed the entire contingent for six bucks but we were about to head back to the cafeteria at base camp anyway. We were staying on the campus of the Chinese University of Mining Technology located in the northwest of the city. Our hotel was labeled as a cultural exchange center and other than our group I noticed a few American students there, some of whom could have been teenagers. The accommodations were decent enough with each of us assigned to separate rooms that had multiple beds. The concrete floors were covered with a thin municipal building sort of red carpet and while the beds were hard and uncomfortable we were so exhausted each evening that falling asleep wasn't a problem. A long-banged fuwuyuan was stationed at the end of the hallway to attend to our needs provided we look up the appropriate words in our pocket dictionaries.
The niftiest feature of my hotel room was that switching on the main power required inserting a dongle on the room key into a breaker slot. There was also a console built into the bedside table that controlled the AC and room lights. Supposedly no hot water was available between 10 and 5 in the afternoon though I didn't really notice if that was true. My room overlooked a chunk of campus that was unremarkable and occasionally traversed by clusters of students in their graduation gowns.
I know I'm in the habit of hating on Americans but this fellowship turned out a fine group of Yanks. The metiers weren't skewed towards engineering either-- there were linguists, geologists, a couple evolutionary biologists and a bona fide paleontologist. Within the first day or so the so-called 'dynamic' had set in. A tall, charismatic Indian mechanical engineer (I have actually met mechanical engineers who don't fit this description) revealed his past travels of the area and became the defacto student body rep (though officially this title belonged to the entomologist). He wore a different club t-shirt each day of the week and had the most exquisite eyelashes I've recalled seeing on a man.
There was a six-foot-four narrow-faced vegetarian whose studies had taken him to Iowa State, though for what I remain uncertain. The only things I know about my home state university are its condensed matter program and its prohibition of alcohol. The tall vegetarian enjoyed frisbee, knew how to juggle, and took special care to place his go stones in the proper manner between the middle and index fingers. His t-shirt proclaimed the 10th anniversary of the Onion Creek Cloggers' Festival.
For on the spot translation we relied on a USC ABC woman to communicate with clerks and a Princeton Hong Kong native to read menus. The chatty SoCal linguist and Jane Austen fan was fluent in Mandarin but couldn't read it, while the more subdued atmospheric scientist and Pink Floyd aficionado could read thousands of characters but spoke only Cantonese.
Only time prevents me from going into more detail of the personalities involved in the contingent. It was really such a full week that I knew would take several posts to recount, so if you check back later there will be more to come.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Monster Ant! Run!!
Occasionally I take pictures of the Insects of Unusual Size around here but Junjian brought a new champion into my office the other day. Our air conditioning units have been broken since I've arrived here so we've been leaving our windows open (it doesn't help that much) to make drafts. The one in our office was finally fixed last Thursday but Junjian's has yet to be installed so we think this critter crawled in through her window. So far it's devoured three undergrads and a black special ops captain who was three weeks away from retirement. Once it reaches the chemical stockroom it will be all over....
Other than work not much is happening in Shanghai. The rains here seem to have come to an end and our air conditioning has arrived just in time for the heat. The sky is clearer than it's ever been and I can even see stars in the night sky.
My bike was stolen again last night, cable locks and all. It happened while I went to play badminton. By the time I had showered and returned to the lab it was dark so I ran downstairs to bring my bike inside. I spent ten minutes looking through the hutches but it had vanished. I realize that it's a common problem around here but really the campus could go a long way by installing lights in the freaking plazas. A couple nights ago I passed a girl as I was walking through the hedges and as I said "Excuse me," she shrieked and leaped backward into the hedge. She probably thought I was a giant tree ant, an albino one anyway.
Other than work not much is happening in Shanghai. The rains here seem to have come to an end and our air conditioning has arrived just in time for the heat. The sky is clearer than it's ever been and I can even see stars in the night sky.
My bike was stolen again last night, cable locks and all. It happened while I went to play badminton. By the time I had showered and returned to the lab it was dark so I ran downstairs to bring my bike inside. I spent ten minutes looking through the hutches but it had vanished. I realize that it's a common problem around here but really the campus could go a long way by installing lights in the freaking plazas. A couple nights ago I passed a girl as I was walking through the hedges and as I said "Excuse me," she shrieked and leaped backward into the hedge. She probably thought I was a giant tree ant, an albino one anyway.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Back From Beijing
I had my first actual conversation in Chinese on the way back from the Shanghai airport yesterday. The taxi driver just wanted to know where I was from, what places I was visiting and how long I was going to be around. He expressed wonderment that I was smaller than other Americans that he'd met and I didn't have anything to say to that but agree. He replied, "That's fine, Tom Cruise is small too I think."
I doubt I'll have much time to update until Sunday but I did upload a kajillion pictures.
I doubt I'll have much time to update until Sunday but I did upload a kajillion pictures.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Siblings
"How's your mucous? Has it turned black yet?" Tony asked me as we ascended the concrete steps of his apartment building to his sixth-floor flat. I was determined to reach the top without a sign of being winded; I must've failed. Still, my answer was no. "In another month maybe," I told him.
He chuckled. "It's funny that none of my students realize just how polluted this country is. They've lived with it their whole lives and most of them have never even visited the western part of China. Whenever there's anything in the news about pollution it's about how much the U.S. and Europe are responsible for global warming. They're pretty shocked when I show them statistics that China has like 22 of the 30 worst polluted cities in the world but it's true even when they look it up themselves."
I took his bag of food we'd bought at the House of the Inscrutable and Venerable Colonel as he unlocked the door. Tony had been the first American I met in China who wasn't completely piss drunk, though in all fairness the other ones I'd seen were around Nanjing Road at four o'clock in the morning. He and his Atlantan wife have been English teachers here for a couple years and live just a couple blocks south of my campus-- I had literally bumped into him at the corner bank.
The apartment was well furnished and more comfortable and well-lit than the exterior building
suggested. A pair of Taiwanese guests were also there, but all three women spent their dinner talking amongst themselves in heavily accented Chinese and cooing over Tony and Charity's baby daughter while Tony and I compared notes about life over here (ok, I admit I cooed at the baby too).
Pollution is being solved here the way it seems the government solves all their problems-- massive remobilization. Since March, all construction on new structures has ceased in Beijing and all urban factories have been relocated to the edges of the province. Even still it's unlikely that the air will clear up well enough for the Olympics but I should have a better notion of that once I go to Beijing next week.
As Tony reiterated, what mattered the most were peoples' perceptions. There's a particular Shanghai native I encountered at the expats' weekly lunch in Zhongshan Park (lunch wasn't actually in the park but at a restraunt in the shopping complex nearby). Anyway this fellow is a 22-yr-old econ student named Yao (no relation) Zhang (no relation) who was too eager to talk with me after lunch was ended. First I told him that I was going to get on the train and he said 'oh me too we can ride together' and then I changed my mind and said that I needed a walk after eating such a big meal and he said 'oh that's a great idea i'll come with you'. Unable to be rid of him I cross examined him as we strolled around the park.
Shanghai was the greatest city in China, Yao boasted, much cleaner than those dirty crime-ridden towns Guangzhou and Shenzhen to the south and much clearer than Beijing. Indeed it was the first sunny day I'd experienced downtown and I took as many pictures around the park as I could. When I asked what he thought of China's leaders he was forthright and unhesitant with admiration for them, though he regretted that officials have become more corrupt since the reigns of Mao and Deng. I asked what would happen if uniformed men appeared at his door one night to send him to a farm as was common in the 1960s.
"They could not do this," he said.
"There are laws?" I asked.
"Yes, Deng Xiaopeng made new laws."
"But the laws could change?"
"No, this all happened when China is very poor."
On the one hand it's unfortunate that I don't speak the language and must resort to asking leading questions and putting words in people's mouths but even still I found our exchange over the One Child Policy bizarre. I prefaced my questions by reminding him that the U.S.S.R. encouraged women to have as many babies as they could and special awards were given to those who had ten children with the same husband.
"What if tomorrow Hu Jintao said families could have more children? You just said that the population was too high but would you agree if the One Child Policy were suspended?"
"Yes."
"You'd be ok with that?"
"Yes."
"And if they changed it back you'd be ok with that as well?"
"Yes."
Yao's English had proven very fluent earlier but he offered no provisos or parentheticals. At a loss for words I patted him on the back and offered to buy him an ice cream cone.
Other people like Junjian, the teacher and laser fusion researcher who works in the office next to mine, are more consistent. She sees the Policy as a grim necessity though she looks wistful when she says she wants two children. "You want a little girl and a little boy?" I ask.
"Yes!" she beams. Junjian has a thirteen year old brother which was permitted since she herself was born before the policy went into effect, or something along those lines. Yes, this woman is older than me:
When 31 years old you reach, look as good you will not
Chinese share a national unity that I don't encounter in America, perhaps it only existed in my country during the post-WWII boom and maybe not even then. They take offense at public criticisms of their government (my coworkers actually took a bus trip to Atlanta to protest this guy) but they are pleased to discuss issues one-on-one with curious westerners. At the same time, they lambast western-concocted fallacies in a manner that they could never level against their own state-run media. By and large they are very proud of what they are accomplishing. For the past couple centuries, China has been a declining empire, a British colony and opium den, a Japanese colony and slaughterhouse, a socialist experiment gone haywire. Now they're the fastest growing economy in the world and the host of international celebrations. People are very optimistic.
And they're excited about western culture. Most popular American products among the Chinese are the NBA, music videos, KFC and Mickey Mouse. They share a unhealthy predilection for inappropriate t-shirts as well.
The portending doom question that journalists like to ask is whether Chinese admire American independence more than American wealth. I don't know if you'd even make a definitive statement about Americans with regards to that. I am uploading an English assignment that a student gave me to correct for her. I ended up correcting more of her teacher's grammar than her own but the content of the passage was more interesting. Next week I will meet up with the other American students in Beijing. I don't know whether I'll be able to post another entry but at least I should have plenty of things to talk about when I return.
He chuckled. "It's funny that none of my students realize just how polluted this country is. They've lived with it their whole lives and most of them have never even visited the western part of China. Whenever there's anything in the news about pollution it's about how much the U.S. and Europe are responsible for global warming. They're pretty shocked when I show them statistics that China has like 22 of the 30 worst polluted cities in the world but it's true even when they look it up themselves."
I took his bag of food we'd bought at the House of the Inscrutable and Venerable Colonel as he unlocked the door. Tony had been the first American I met in China who wasn't completely piss drunk, though in all fairness the other ones I'd seen were around Nanjing Road at four o'clock in the morning. He and his Atlantan wife have been English teachers here for a couple years and live just a couple blocks south of my campus-- I had literally bumped into him at the corner bank.
The apartment was well furnished and more comfortable and well-lit than the exterior building
suggested. A pair of Taiwanese guests were also there, but all three women spent their dinner talking amongst themselves in heavily accented Chinese and cooing over Tony and Charity's baby daughter while Tony and I compared notes about life over here (ok, I admit I cooed at the baby too).
Pollution is being solved here the way it seems the government solves all their problems-- massive remobilization. Since March, all construction on new structures has ceased in Beijing and all urban factories have been relocated to the edges of the province. Even still it's unlikely that the air will clear up well enough for the Olympics but I should have a better notion of that once I go to Beijing next week.
As Tony reiterated, what mattered the most were peoples' perceptions. There's a particular Shanghai native I encountered at the expats' weekly lunch in Zhongshan Park (lunch wasn't actually in the park but at a restraunt in the shopping complex nearby). Anyway this fellow is a 22-yr-old econ student named Yao (no relation) Zhang (no relation) who was too eager to talk with me after lunch was ended. First I told him that I was going to get on the train and he said 'oh me too we can ride together' and then I changed my mind and said that I needed a walk after eating such a big meal and he said 'oh that's a great idea i'll come with you'. Unable to be rid of him I cross examined him as we strolled around the park.
Shanghai was the greatest city in China, Yao boasted, much cleaner than those dirty crime-ridden towns Guangzhou and Shenzhen to the south and much clearer than Beijing. Indeed it was the first sunny day I'd experienced downtown and I took as many pictures around the park as I could. When I asked what he thought of China's leaders he was forthright and unhesitant with admiration for them, though he regretted that officials have become more corrupt since the reigns of Mao and Deng. I asked what would happen if uniformed men appeared at his door one night to send him to a farm as was common in the 1960s.
"They could not do this," he said.
"There are laws?" I asked.
"Yes, Deng Xiaopeng made new laws."
"But the laws could change?"
"No, this all happened when China is very poor."
On the one hand it's unfortunate that I don't speak the language and must resort to asking leading questions and putting words in people's mouths but even still I found our exchange over the One Child Policy bizarre. I prefaced my questions by reminding him that the U.S.S.R. encouraged women to have as many babies as they could and special awards were given to those who had ten children with the same husband.
"What if tomorrow Hu Jintao said families could have more children? You just said that the population was too high but would you agree if the One Child Policy were suspended?"
"Yes."
"You'd be ok with that?"
"Yes."
"And if they changed it back you'd be ok with that as well?"
"Yes."
Yao's English had proven very fluent earlier but he offered no provisos or parentheticals. At a loss for words I patted him on the back and offered to buy him an ice cream cone.
Other people like Junjian, the teacher and laser fusion researcher who works in the office next to mine, are more consistent. She sees the Policy as a grim necessity though she looks wistful when she says she wants two children. "You want a little girl and a little boy?" I ask.
"Yes!" she beams. Junjian has a thirteen year old brother which was permitted since she herself was born before the policy went into effect, or something along those lines. Yes, this woman is older than me:
When 31 years old you reach, look as good you will not
And they're excited about western culture. Most popular American products among the Chinese are the NBA, music videos, KFC and Mickey Mouse. They share a unhealthy predilection for inappropriate t-shirts as well.
The portending doom question that journalists like to ask is whether Chinese admire American independence more than American wealth. I don't know if you'd even make a definitive statement about Americans with regards to that. I am uploading an English assignment that a student gave me to correct for her. I ended up correcting more of her teacher's grammar than her own but the content of the passage was more interesting. Next week I will meet up with the other American students in Beijing. I don't know whether I'll be able to post another entry but at least I should have plenty of things to talk about when I return.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Bad Ideas Part Two
This week marks the nineteenth anniversary of the student protests in Tiananmen Square where an estimated 200 students were shot to death by the PLA. Like many similar incidents in Asia there is no official count of the casualties and most people younger than 25 are unaware that the protests even took place.
I have no intention for this to become a 'political' blog so if it should happen that I'm unable to disable comments for this post I would appreciate anyone wishing to comment to do so through email. I am compelled to talk about political thought and attitudes here because they're relevant to daily life and because there's a lot of misinformation.
For nearly four years I've collaborated with an American-naturalized Chinese professor who culls his grad students from the top schools of his home country. Many of your own experiences will probably bear out the perception that Chinese nationals are notorious for keeping to their own kin and culture while they study abroad and to a large extent I don't blame them. Their English abilities are often minimal when they arrive and they have well established communities that they can hook up with once they're in the States.
So it took quite some time but eventually my coworkers became friends and allies as we collectively dealt with one research setback after another before making the occasional breakthrough. We also enjoyed having political discussions that could last over an hour and one in particular was very astute in his criticisms of both Chinese and U.S. policy.
Now that I write this here, even though I work in a research institute on issues far removed from political variables, nagging concerns about the careers of my friends and coworkers prevent me from recounting many of our discussions. I'm posting to a public blog that's publicly inaccessible in this country and the only Chinese who might read it would be taking notes for some Party-run committee. I use a proxy server to connect to the internet here but the Tor/Privoxy programs don't work or I can't figure out how to use them correctly, so any traffic coming from my IP can be traced.
Most likely the worst that could happen is that my post gets deleted or my blog gets shut down. Considering blogs didn't exist nineteen years ago, that's not such a huge deal.
So here we go:
Journalism may not be the most tightly regulated industry here, but journalists do have the best venue to complain. Journalists are suspicious of technology to begin with and Americans, in general, are very suspicious of China. This comes both from those neocons who haven't died off yet, the ones yearning for another Cold War, as well bridge-climbing attention whores.
Recently Rolling Stone published an interesting article by Shock-Doc Crusader Naomi Klein examining the development of China's integrated security system. It's stuff like this that makes it tough to do research or business over here. Our group had to undergo months of legal wrangling to convince airhead lawyers at Florida State that our detection system was not being used to make night vision goggles or guidance systems before they would allow us to ship our older creations to the mother country.
But amid her ranting she raises a serious point about the market demand for surveillance tracking and communication monitoring. There is certainly exponentially increasing demand for these products as result, though, of the fear marketing that's become so prevalent over the past decade. People are scared of viruses, terrorists, sex offenders, myspace pages, baby boomers and on and on and on. This may relate to her well-toured book though I admit I haven't read it and don't really plan to. I think she's too quick to lay the blame on entrepreneurs like the one she interviews, companies whose very nature entices them to constantly improve their products and services.
But before I get too far into a Once-ler frame of mind I want to continue my line of reasoning. If you're scared of burglars, of course someone's going to sell you an alarm system and a nine-millimeter. Same goes for terrorists and wiretapping, for baby boomers and Logan's Run-style implants. But before you buy this stuff you need to think 'Who's selling this to me? Is it really in my interest or theirs? Mankind has been able to do with out these things for thousands of years, why is it I should want one now?'
This is my opinion of where America sits today as it peers at the rest of the world; it asks to buy everything but other people's problems. Later today or maybe this weekend I'll get back to the Chinese opinions that I've encountered so far.
I have no intention for this to become a 'political' blog so if it should happen that I'm unable to disable comments for this post I would appreciate anyone wishing to comment to do so through email. I am compelled to talk about political thought and attitudes here because they're relevant to daily life and because there's a lot of misinformation.
For nearly four years I've collaborated with an American-naturalized Chinese professor who culls his grad students from the top schools of his home country. Many of your own experiences will probably bear out the perception that Chinese nationals are notorious for keeping to their own kin and culture while they study abroad and to a large extent I don't blame them. Their English abilities are often minimal when they arrive and they have well established communities that they can hook up with once they're in the States.
So it took quite some time but eventually my coworkers became friends and allies as we collectively dealt with one research setback after another before making the occasional breakthrough. We also enjoyed having political discussions that could last over an hour and one in particular was very astute in his criticisms of both Chinese and U.S. policy.
Now that I write this here, even though I work in a research institute on issues far removed from political variables, nagging concerns about the careers of my friends and coworkers prevent me from recounting many of our discussions. I'm posting to a public blog that's publicly inaccessible in this country and the only Chinese who might read it would be taking notes for some Party-run committee. I use a proxy server to connect to the internet here but the Tor/Privoxy programs don't work or I can't figure out how to use them correctly, so any traffic coming from my IP can be traced.
Most likely the worst that could happen is that my post gets deleted or my blog gets shut down. Considering blogs didn't exist nineteen years ago, that's not such a huge deal.
So here we go:
Journalism may not be the most tightly regulated industry here, but journalists do have the best venue to complain. Journalists are suspicious of technology to begin with and Americans, in general, are very suspicious of China. This comes both from those neocons who haven't died off yet, the ones yearning for another Cold War, as well bridge-climbing attention whores.
Recently Rolling Stone published an interesting article by Shock-Doc Crusader Naomi Klein examining the development of China's integrated security system. It's stuff like this that makes it tough to do research or business over here. Our group had to undergo months of legal wrangling to convince airhead lawyers at Florida State that our detection system was not being used to make night vision goggles or guidance systems before they would allow us to ship our older creations to the mother country.
But amid her ranting she raises a serious point about the market demand for surveillance tracking and communication monitoring. There is certainly exponentially increasing demand for these products as result, though, of the fear marketing that's become so prevalent over the past decade. People are scared of viruses, terrorists, sex offenders, myspace pages, baby boomers and on and on and on. This may relate to her well-toured book though I admit I haven't read it and don't really plan to. I think she's too quick to lay the blame on entrepreneurs like the one she interviews, companies whose very nature entices them to constantly improve their products and services.
But before I get too far into a Once-ler frame of mind I want to continue my line of reasoning. If you're scared of burglars, of course someone's going to sell you an alarm system and a nine-millimeter. Same goes for terrorists and wiretapping, for baby boomers and Logan's Run-style implants. But before you buy this stuff you need to think 'Who's selling this to me? Is it really in my interest or theirs? Mankind has been able to do with out these things for thousands of years, why is it I should want one now?'
This is my opinion of where America sits today as it peers at the rest of the world; it asks to buy everything but other people's problems. Later today or maybe this weekend I'll get back to the Chinese opinions that I've encountered so far.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Bad Ideas Part One
Our lab at SJTU is roughly twice the size of the one in Tallahassee and is fitted with door seals and airlocks. The equipment we are assembling is roughly similar with the key electron gun components packed and shipped over from the Magnet Lab itself. We'll be installing the actual last-gen gun that was built at FSU in 2002 of course the detector and the cathode will be rebuilt to modern specs.
What this means is that pieces are coming from everywhere. Shipments from America, Shenzhen and Beijing have all been trundling through the locks for the past week to await assembly once they all arrive. One major part of the detection system is the microchannel plate which amplifies the signal from the gun to be recorded by the camera. This, along with the stainless steel housing for the electron gun, were manufactured far to the west of here. However there was a large concern that these parts could not be packed and shipped properly.
With neither complaint nor regret Zhang took it upon himself to make the fifteen hour journey to Xi'an not far from the earthquake zone where aftershocks have been felt as recently as last Monday. He stayed only as long as necessary to load the boxes onto the sleeper car of the Shanghai-Lhasa line. Yes, *that* Lhasa.
I awoke around 7:30 on Sunday morning to my phone buzzing with Zhu's text message. I hadn't known the details of the trip but we would have to leave from Minhang fairly early to meet Zhang at the train station. It wasn't until ten though that we rode our bikes to the metro and when we did reach the station at the north edge of the city we discovered that the train was forty minutes late. All the consequences of this, the nifty pictures I took and conversations that Zhu and I had were interesting but I only mean to supply this as a backdrop for what happened when the three of us finally returned to Jinchuan station back in Minhang.
The box with the steel case wasn't that heavy but it was over three feet long by a foot and a half wide and took two of us to carry it through the metro crowds. The MCP was a tiny thing but bundled up snugly in a glass desiccator so that was a box that would be handy for hiding a cat or two. It was nearly two o'clock when we began hailing taxis to take us to campus a mile away... and none of them would drive us because it wasn't far enough. I wasn't sure what I could threaten the taxi drivers with although airstrikes came immediately to mind. Maybe if I had just shouted continuously at one of them he would've relented. None of us had eaten lunch and I'd only had a bite six hours ago and was approaching delirium.
Zhang and Zhu discussed something for a moment then turned to me. "We'll take the bikes," Zhang said.
"You are shitting me," I cried. While seeing people and packages on rear bike shelves was common enough, this was a horse of a different color in my eyes. Three of us, a forty pound steel case and a delicately fabricated semiconductor amplifier were not appropriate cargo for two bicycles.
Now there are essentially three ways the narrative can branch at this point. I could go along with their scheme and add a new ability to my repertoire. I could attempt this circus act and fail catastrophically along with weeks of fabrication that cost many thousands of dollars. Or I could convince my coworkers to see reason and lead them back to the campus on foot. Well here's the way I'm going to tell it.
In Zhang's first few attempts to balance on the back of my bike I kept teetering and couldn't steer straight until he jumped off. He decided that we should switch places but no one had ever shown me the trick of sitting down on the shelf just as the bike starts to move. The third time I nearly fell down and he suggested I ride full saddle instead.
It turns out there is no conceivable position to do that without getting one's keister chewed up. I grimaced and considered offhand that this would be a fine time to meditate through the pain. I held the MCP box against my thigh while steadying myself with my right hand hooked under the bicycle seat. Meanwhile Zhu was riding around us chortling with the e-gun case sticking far out to each side from his shelf, pinned down only by his right hand as he steered with his left. We set off and I threatened Zhang with terrible disfigurement if he went over any bumps.
He was very careful but even still by the time we were halfway there I started whimpering. It was hellish but the only thing I needed to do was not let my feet touch the ground. I tried singing a song to myself. "Oh my rear is raw and my thighs are skinned/This MCP stays against my shin/"
"What's that?" Zhang asked.
"Nothing keep driving!!"
When we arrived finally I curled into a ball and rolled around howling on the grass. Zhu leaned over me. "So you don't like being Zhang's girlfriend?" he asked.
"Your women's asses stack so well I could stuff them in a Pez dispenser!" I wasn't sure why that came to mind.
What this means is that pieces are coming from everywhere. Shipments from America, Shenzhen and Beijing have all been trundling through the locks for the past week to await assembly once they all arrive. One major part of the detection system is the microchannel plate which amplifies the signal from the gun to be recorded by the camera. This, along with the stainless steel housing for the electron gun, were manufactured far to the west of here. However there was a large concern that these parts could not be packed and shipped properly.
With neither complaint nor regret Zhang took it upon himself to make the fifteen hour journey to Xi'an not far from the earthquake zone where aftershocks have been felt as recently as last Monday. He stayed only as long as necessary to load the boxes onto the sleeper car of the Shanghai-Lhasa line. Yes, *that* Lhasa.
I awoke around 7:30 on Sunday morning to my phone buzzing with Zhu's text message. I hadn't known the details of the trip but we would have to leave from Minhang fairly early to meet Zhang at the train station. It wasn't until ten though that we rode our bikes to the metro and when we did reach the station at the north edge of the city we discovered that the train was forty minutes late. All the consequences of this, the nifty pictures I took and conversations that Zhu and I had were interesting but I only mean to supply this as a backdrop for what happened when the three of us finally returned to Jinchuan station back in Minhang.
The box with the steel case wasn't that heavy but it was over three feet long by a foot and a half wide and took two of us to carry it through the metro crowds. The MCP was a tiny thing but bundled up snugly in a glass desiccator so that was a box that would be handy for hiding a cat or two. It was nearly two o'clock when we began hailing taxis to take us to campus a mile away... and none of them would drive us because it wasn't far enough. I wasn't sure what I could threaten the taxi drivers with although airstrikes came immediately to mind. Maybe if I had just shouted continuously at one of them he would've relented. None of us had eaten lunch and I'd only had a bite six hours ago and was approaching delirium.
Zhang and Zhu discussed something for a moment then turned to me. "We'll take the bikes," Zhang said.
"You are shitting me," I cried. While seeing people and packages on rear bike shelves was common enough, this was a horse of a different color in my eyes. Three of us, a forty pound steel case and a delicately fabricated semiconductor amplifier were not appropriate cargo for two bicycles.
Now there are essentially three ways the narrative can branch at this point. I could go along with their scheme and add a new ability to my repertoire. I could attempt this circus act and fail catastrophically along with weeks of fabrication that cost many thousands of dollars. Or I could convince my coworkers to see reason and lead them back to the campus on foot. Well here's the way I'm going to tell it.
In Zhang's first few attempts to balance on the back of my bike I kept teetering and couldn't steer straight until he jumped off. He decided that we should switch places but no one had ever shown me the trick of sitting down on the shelf just as the bike starts to move. The third time I nearly fell down and he suggested I ride full saddle instead.
It turns out there is no conceivable position to do that without getting one's keister chewed up. I grimaced and considered offhand that this would be a fine time to meditate through the pain. I held the MCP box against my thigh while steadying myself with my right hand hooked under the bicycle seat. Meanwhile Zhu was riding around us chortling with the e-gun case sticking far out to each side from his shelf, pinned down only by his right hand as he steered with his left. We set off and I threatened Zhang with terrible disfigurement if he went over any bumps.
He was very careful but even still by the time we were halfway there I started whimpering. It was hellish but the only thing I needed to do was not let my feet touch the ground. I tried singing a song to myself. "Oh my rear is raw and my thighs are skinned/This MCP stays against my shin/"
"What's that?" Zhang asked.
"Nothing keep driving!!"
When we arrived finally I curled into a ball and rolled around howling on the grass. Zhu leaned over me. "So you don't like being Zhang's girlfriend?" he asked.
"Your women's asses stack so well I could stuff them in a Pez dispenser!" I wasn't sure why that came to mind.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Metal vs. Rock
Some mook stole my bike the other night while I was in the lab. I don't know if there's an actual rule but when I tried to chain my bike to the bike hutch outside my dorm the concierge took issue and told me not to do that (at least, that was my impression given that I only understood the words 'no' and 'bicycle'). Of course it wouldn't be worth supplying enough hitching posts to accommodate the tens of thousands of bicycles there must be on campus so people make do by tying their back wheel up and mostly not buying a ride they'll grow attached to. This also allows the groundskeepers to sort stacks of bikes that become tangled or in people's way but of course it also allows mooks to carry them off. Zhang told me that two of his bikes have been stolen on this campus and there was little that one could do about it.
But I was very lucky. Early the next morning as I returned to the lab to scour the area I found my abandoned bike behind a garden wall. The thief had unsuccessfully tried to smash the lock with a nearby brick and though the housing had smushed, the inner cable had held.
Nearby there was a more unfortunate cable lock of a similar design only this one had had a plastic housing inside a thin metal shell. It had been smashed thoroughly and whatever it had protected had vanished.
While I'm pleased that my lock was sufficient to fend off the cro-magnon raiders it was not going to pose a challenge to those tribes that have discovered fire or simple metal tools. I bought a sturdier lock with a thicker braided cable to deter the more advanced homo erectus.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The Corporate Overlords
Yay Capitalism!!
The torch relay came to the Minghan district on Saturday and I haven't experienced a larger corporate event since the 99X Stone Mountain Summer Concert of aught-two. Every T-shirt with a Chinese flag on the front had a Lenovo logo on the back at least as big. I'm still trying to find out where I can get one, I'm sure they're free as long as you give them your email address.
You can see all the pictures here
The guy next to me in the photos is Zhang who is the most cheerful of my officemates. I sort of get the feeling he's the most popular--his girlfriend is a student at another university. Our procession gathered in the lobby of the physics building and we were given as many brand-name nationalistic accouterments as we could carry. We only had to walk to the other side of campus to await the torch guard.
Our group was assigned a cheer honoring China and the ravaged Sichuan province. Zhang translated it for me as 'China refills, like you refill with oil.' Refuels? I asked. 'Yes, that's it.'
I didn't know how to even ask him to elaborate on this but I swear that later that day I actually saw a girl wearing a black T-shirt with the English words "China Refuels."
Zhang's supervising professor is Jie (no relation) Zhang who collaborates formally with my supervisor, Zheng-Ming Shen. In addition to being the head of the entire physics department, JZ is president of Jiao Tong University and as such held the honor of being one of the torch bearers that morning. Even then though I didn't lay eyes on him as my group stood further along in the route. Occasionally I would hear ZS mention that JZ wanted to meet with me but had no time. At this point I'm expecting to be tossed into a black sedan on my way home one night and spirited to this mad laser scientist's underground lair. Will let you know how that goes.
The vanguard of the torch relay was comprised of cheerleaders for CocaCola, Samsung and Lenovo. It's true that many of this year's athletes had to contend with rotted teeth, carpal tunnel and blurred vision caused by watching Rosie O'Donnell on 45" plasma displays. I was able to get one pretty good shot of the torch runner however.
So that was all pretty cool. I spent the rest of the morning playing badminton with Zhang and Junjian, the woman who works next door to us. I've been able to talk to her a little bit about the research institute in Osaka where she's spent nearly two years working. English is tough with her and neither of us are conversationally fluent in Japanese either but she is a wicked good badminton player and beat Zhang into the floor like a tent peg.
Sunday I took the train to the East Bank, or Pudong as they call it. Here autos have uncontested dominance of the roads and there were fewer crosswalks as I approached the commercial district from the south. There's an enormous park at one end of the main boulevard that I'll return to when I have more time-- it's the sort you pay a ticket to get into though there's plenty enough to see from the outside. I arrived early in the morning and saw kite peddlers set up their wares across the street. If I'd stayed on my side the vendor wouldn't have pounced on me but I wanted a good kite photo while the sky was still blue. Having a kite of my own didn't seem like such a bad thing so I haggled the vendor down to half his starting price. But no sooner had we made the exchange than another fellow came running up to sell me the kite string. Brilliant.
The walk to the other end of the boulevard, toward the skyscrapers and the river, grew uglier. There were still scores of gardeners tending the flora but the smog and traffic were thick. I had lunch at a three-star restraunt called Pizza Hut where I ate chicken pasta in a red cream sauce and a tall slushie made from fresh grapefruit. I'd pondered over the pizza menu but decided it was too expensive.
By the time I reached Lujiazui on the riverbank I had a bad sunburn on the right side of my body while the air was so thick that nothing cast a shadow. This is the Blade Runner district, the one I'd previously only seen night panoramas of. There's also a shot on the back of my guide book of the Oriental Pearl Tower as the sun is setting so the concrete looks rosy. During the daytime the place is gruesome and the main attractions loom like the spires of Mordor. I didn't go into the Pearl but I slipped my camera through the gate to capture the tower rules which are keepers.
Between the Pearl and the SuperBrand Mall is a roundabout with no stoplights or crosswalks. Pedestrians did their best to crowd their way to other side and having reached the mall I rewarded myself with a new pair of shoes.
Shopping centers are mainly divided into brand kiosks which makes me suspect that the sales force is paid on commission, though that would truly be anticommunist. The sneaker outlet I went into was big enough to get lost in and my limited language skills meant that I could comparison shop only before I started trying things on. Brands are generally as expensive here as they are in the states and even the national ones fall in the same price range. There would be no haggling at this shop but the laces would be thrown in for free, at least.
Far more treacherous than getting to the mall was pathfinding back south to the Jinmao Tower and World Financial Center. Here people actually climbed over two construction fences and dodged ten lanes of traffic to reach the far side. Though I'd tried getting back into shape before my trip it hadn't occurred to me to prepare by going rock climbing while someone swung bags of concrete at my head.
I didn't expect to see much in the observatory but I still hadn't gotten a good view of the river. It coincidentally cost the same as getting to the top of the Empire State Building and the elevator rocketed up the 250 meters in a bit less than thirty seconds. At the top one of the vendors gave me a free pearl that she plucked from a clam before my eyes. The only other thing to behold there was how truly hideous the Huangpu River is.
Once again I had to cross the street back to the side with the subway. Before crossing the river I hopped over another construction fence into a small park where I stretched my screaming hamstrings. The park hosted no fewer than three bridal photo shoots; maybe they were hoping to get better lighting as the sun went down. A truly interesting ornament was a bronze statue of three westerners holding their cameras up to marvel at the glorious works of the East.
The strip of land just on the west bank of the river is known as the Bund where feet and scooters are the preferred means of travel, where the subway stops have higher densities of westerners, peddlers and pimps. There was a foreign language bookstore here that I wanted to investigate and in the meantime I got dinner from a streetside wok. The owners offered me DVDs and a picnic table to eat my noodles at. I took them up on the latter.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
The University
As of this morning, the official death toll from the earthquake in Sichuan stands at 51,151 with 29,328 still missing. This exceeds my estimate from last Tuesday afternoon when I replied to Dian that fifty thousand people were probably dead given the population of the area. Her English is better than my Chinese but she didn't quite understand what I was saying. She shook her head, "Twenty-two thousand people died." "There will be more," I said. There wasn't much else to say.
Red Cross workers and student organizations were quick to take up collections around the city although very little of daily life has been affected here. Sichuan isn't quite on the other side of the moon, but you can see from the chart below how far the truck o' love has to travel to get there.
The newspapers and TV stations are giving the disaster as much coverage as possible. Unlike Katrina there aren't any political crucifixions lined up (for the moment) and instead the government and its press are consistent in calls for unity, courage, generosity and so forth. In its defense the federal government acted very quickly and the first rescue teams were organized in something like the first half hour. And they've been doing more than a heckuva job. The news photo that I wanted to find a copy of was of an EMT worker breast feeding an orphaned infant in a crowded medical tent. These guys go all out.
There doesn't appear to be much discussion as to whether these buildings were up to proper specifications or how the slaughter might have been assuaged. There is still no designated 'earthquake season' that the Red Cross needs to be aware of, so it would seem that not only is the Party off the hook, but they can get a huge dose of global sympathy after the nasty torch relay and arms dealing spats of the past few months. I can't really tell since at the moment L.A. Times is timing out. Eighty thousand people is a small number when talking about Asia and even the Asians know it.
On Monday afternoon horns blared throughout the city at the appointed grieving time. Like the other students I rang my bicycle bell.
Apologies for the lack of specific information but I do feel almost cut off here, though it's indeed a pleasant place to be cut off. Last Tuesday I got a better idea of where I was. I was still heavily jet lagged so I went back to my room early in the afternoon and and didn't wake up until 10 pm. My professor I had met with briefly but he would be in Beijing till the end of the week and the lab was still under construction. Refusing to spend the night in my room after that grueling 15 hour flight I studied my guide book. There was an internet cafe and a metro stop not far from the campus. All I had to do was go out the east gate and head south for a couple blocks. If I got lost it was no big deal, I would just keep the campus and the highway to the north of me.
So I set off with my subway map and walked east for at least ten minutes before I got to the edge of campus and crossed the highway. The road was completely deserted, as in there was no sign of people much less a metro stop. The campus though was on the edge of my admittedly zoomed out map so perhaps if I kept walking east I would find something. About half a mile later a corporate park appeared on my right. It was on the other side of a canal and the only sounds in the night were the croaks of either frogs, marshbirds or some unpleasantly sized insects. I couldn't make out their shapes as I crossed over the culvert.
Luring me further into the corporate park were the signs on the buildings. I had wandered into the Chinese offices of Microsoft and Intel. Eventually I came to the night watch at a parking gate and decided to roll the dice. He didn't speak any English but I was hoping he could at least point me in a direction or reference the road I'd just walked down. I showed him my subway map where I circled Hongqiao Lu Station. He was eager to assist but I understood absolutely nothing of what he said.
As I was turning away, a cab pulled up to the gate, perhaps the third car I'd seen in the past forty minutes. The driver got out along with the passenger and I waited for him to finish peeing in the bushes before I approached him with my map. After a few minutes miming and using my four dozen word vocabulary in the most excruciatingly creative ways possible I just got in the passenger seat. Any place he would take me would be fine as long as it was *somewhere*. We began driving north.
It was clear by then that I was not on the map at all. SJTU had two campuses, I remembered, and no one had really informed me as to which I'd be staying at. At least I was being driven towards the downtown area where things might be open. After twenty kilometers I started getting very concerned and tried asking the driver to stop. He obliged in the middle of an exit ramp.
The problem with Shanghai traffic is neither the volume of cars nor the layout of the streets. Drivers jostle with each other like high schoolers in a crowded hallway and it's perfectly acceptable to move over the double yellow into oncoming traffic if you need to pass or if someone encroaches from your blind spot. My driver's tone though was very reassuring and looking around I recognized some features from my map. I relented and he drove the rest of the way into downtown.
I walked toward a commercial square and found I'd missed the last train at 11:15. The McDonald's though were open 24 hours so I went in and ordered McNuggets since I didn't know how to say "Hold the mayo."
Long long story short I made it back to SJTU, south campus a little after nine the next morning. All my photos may come to a Picassa album near you but here are a few in the meantime, unfortunately not compressed for bandwidth. As near as I can tell I'm the only American student here. There are some Russians and Malays in my dorm but we rarely encounter each other. Besides them I've glimpsed two other whites and a couple Nubian women. Someone I met in the cafeteria mentioned that there was an American accounting professor but he may have retired. Until this past weekend it seemed I could be the only American outside of downtown but I ran into one randomly during a bank run. An English teacher at a local high school who offered to guide me around. I'll take him up on it.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
The City
I should start by describing where I am. Shanghai is thirteen time zones east of Eastern Time and twelve hours ahead on a daylight savings clock. Beijing is about three hours north by plane or perhaps five hours by train. The name Shanghai itself simply means 'on the sea' and it covers an enormous chin of land south of where the Yangtze meets the ocean. The city is divided into east and west banks by the winding Huangpu River which I crossed on my way back from the airport.
From the cab there wasn't much to see but the road. I spent the trip chatting with my new officemate Zhu and when I glanced out the window I saw only the tops of modest apartment and office buildings over the concrete barrier. On the highway side of the barrier were flower bushes and gardeners. I suppose I'd expected the city to be a mix of New York's Chinatown and the Los Angeles from Blade Runner but Shanghai is the greenest city I've ever visited. There are shade trees every ten feet in pedestrian areas. Flower bushes and hedges are maintained on every meridian and under every ramp and the overpass railings themselves are lined with troughs of plants.
I was also impressed by the paucity of autos. The only time so far I've encountered a bumper to bumper traffic jam was on a bridge during the initial taxi ride. In the oncoming lanes a non-fatal impact had stopped cars for the better portion of a mile, but so far I can't imagine stopping twice at the same red light in this city at any time of day. As Zhu informed me people were simply priced out of buying cars and even then getting a license was almost half the price of the car itself. Even the rare parking lot we drove past was mostly empty, at least of cars. Bikes are the way to travel here; with no hills gears are unnecessary and the same is almost true for brakes as I later discovered. Old folks, business people and students all get around on two wheelers. Cyclists carry passengers who ride sidesaddle on their book stands and mothers carry toddlers in the front baskets. This morning I saw a man peddling, his wife sitting behind him and their child in her lap. This was actually on my way to get my own bicycle-- the one I had borrowed, like Zhu's, didn't have functioning brakes so I was willing to pay full price for a brand new one.
I buy things here like houses on Pennsylvania Avenue. At the cafeteria I can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner for $2.50 per day. So I guess it would be more like Oriental Avenue. Most things there are a la carte so I point to something and say "Zhe ge" and someone on the other side of the counter puts it on a tray. The dishes are grouped under price tags of 2, 3 or 4 kuai and every meal I've had something different. Fried yam cakes and egg drop soup is my favorite breakfast so far and the pork and chicken stews are tasty with marinade though I can't vouch for the quality of the meat itself. The one truly bizarre thing I've had so far is duck's tongue. I was given a plate of these things shaped like large wishbones with ends curled into talons. At the joint of the bone was a chewy muscle that I scraped off with my incisors and I can't say that it wasn't magically delicious.
Having spent nearly twelve hours traveling from the north part of the West Bank to the southern reaches of the city I have seen exactly one beggar, a silent downtrodden woman who could've been in her eighties. Everyone who sits on the sidewalk is peeling vegetables, welding bedframes, assembling bicycles. Even in neighborhoods where the windows are broken in row after row of concrete tenements there is no graffiti and people leave their homes in the morning dressed for work.
The air pollution is the worst I've ever experienced and oddly it hasn't affected me much. The sea breeze is constantly refreshing but then again it hasn't had a chance to get truly hot in the city. The sky is seldom cloudy and yet it's never clear. Everything disappears after five hundred yards and the buildings in view never lend much character, featureless paper cutouts in a shoebox diorama. I hear the effects of the pollution every morning as well. The birds start squawking when the sun rises at around a quarter to five and a half hour later I can hear the traffic. Then the bicyclists come out and the hacking starts as everyone joins in a ride-by phlegming.
Things that I miss so far... there aren't any street musicians and I have yet to see a pub though plenty of restaurants serve alcohol until two in the morning. I told Zhu about the concept of bars, these places where people go to get drunk. "You can get drunk anywhere," he replied, somewhat befuddled. Most of all I miss coffee. When I ask for it on campus and in the surrounding shops they give me this sugary gunk that's half milk with the other half being something not coffee. I found some instant Nescafe in the supermarket and it's the most expensive food item I've bought by far.
The most annoying thing I've encountered though is the craps game of an internet they have here. WaPo and Slate don't work, I've had BBC load once so I get all my western news from LA Times and Foxnews. Fark works but Slashdot doesn't; LiveJournal will 404, as will any search result for Tibet, Dali Lama and Freenet. Gmail runs fine but Yahoo is very slow. Clearly they need to assist in the arrest of more bloggers to increase their bandwidth. Assuming this gets posted uncensored I'll update a couple times a week.
All in all, I'm digging it.
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