Zzzzz

Another dripping scorcher here in SH. In the ongoing battle against heat my face is continuing to discover ever new upper cheak sweat glands. I think even my eyes know how to sweat by now.

Stuffed ourselves on fish hotpot tonight. America, you are missing out on the wonders of fishballs.

On the way to drinks afterwards with a few visiting friends our cabbie fell asleep at the wheel. In an inverse irony, this cab actually had seatbelts and we were all strapped in safely. Fortunately, he fell asleep off the pedal and not on the accelerator. I’m not sure what makes me sympathetic to this guy as opposed to the many others I’ve given a piece of my mind, but he stopped the meter for us and seemed nice enough. These guys work 20 hour days just to break even, I guess I’m almost surprised this kind of thing hasn’t happened more often. Anyway, phew.

Rainy Guilin

As usual, my brain is overflowing with news from the the last week and I can feel the important little details evaporating with each passing day. I really owe Guilin a solid dedicated post, which I hope to put up with pictures in the near future; here’s the interim recap:

Visited my old China home town of Yantai on business last week. A lot has changed. For one thing the new boardwalk is complete and quite impressive.

After a few weeks of China experiences, David is off to Thailand for the continuation of his summer escapades. A great time, though I wish I’d been able to give him more than just evenings and weekends. Check out his blog for the inside story.

Fortunately, he didn’t depart before we managed to fit in a few adventures in the Southern province of Guilin. Lou, David and I hopped a Friday flight south and spent a weekend of squelching fun amidst the gorgeous karst peaks of backpacker haven Yangshuo. 100% of our time there was sopping wet thanks to Monsoon Bilis, but the damp only added to the fun (that’s right memories, I’m shaping you already). Highlights include: floating down river on an inner tube and finding ourselves two hours past the intended destination (a big thank you to our boat-full of Taiwanese saviours); cycling along (though it felt more like “in”) the Yulong river, getting completely lost (“so many old women with cows can’t be wrong”), and eventually making it to the Buddha Water Caves; and Guilin soup noodles. Anti-highlights: Yangshuo’s famed banana pancakes and the over-hyped village of Xingping.

We arrived back to Shanghai on Monday night and it’s essentially hard to believe Thursday has already rolled around.

Couscous at O&K’s (with visiting friends Martin and Anna) on Tuesday followed by Superman Returns. We’re still trying to figure out which controversial scenes the censors felt in need of cutting (we counted about 8 visually jagged and aurally jarring clips in the middle of the film).

Last night was Scotto’s 30th birthday party: a Punjabi stuffed, danc-arific time.

Will try to put up Guilin pics soon.

P.S. The tech savvy will know, but this blog is syndicated on RSS (see also the new link in the upper left corner). That basically means you can add my blog as an intelligent “bookmark” that will display the headings of my new posts, or you can have the posts appear on your home page (such as, My Yahoo, My AOL or Google IG) like news articles (only, updated less frequently).

Tor

Since this nifty web anonymizer is the only reason I can still use WordPress.com as my blog in China a quick note of appreciation, and by this I mean product plug, is warranted.

Tor is a small, downloadable, and all importantly free application that runs on both mac and windows. The technology is both simple and complicated, I’ll let Tor’s own website explain the peer to peer hosting techniques, but for the lay-user all that is needed is:

a) Download and install the Tor package (consisting of the Tor technology, and a GUI – Graphical User Interface)

b) Set it up. If you’re a Firefox user, download and install the Tor Button, which sets up your browser automatically. If not, Tor has instructions for other browsers on their download page.

c) When you want to be anonymous, run the Tor GUI and click the Tor button “on” in firefox.

Trust me, it’s trés simple. And a lifesaver in the land of censorship. There is a highly noticeable time lag in loading pages when using Tor, but it’s worth the wait. The Firefox Tor button also makes quick work of this problem – simple on and off when I need it. Wonderful.

P.S. Tor is available in multiple languages.

Tor!

Hi folks,

I’m back, with thanks to Tor. But more on that later, it’s time for a real update:

David’s been here a week now, which has been great. Really fun to have friends visiting in this city, though I wish I were on holiday to explore with him… He’s managed to take in a few sites I haven’t even been to myself, for which I’m naturally jealous. Unlike when Katie was here earlier in the year, the weather now is incredibly hot and humid. Summer, aka wet Hell, seemed to arrive just as he did. Virtually every activity outside the the presence of airconditioning (basically, everywhere save my ice cube of an office) has become a bone sapping experience. The deluges have been incredible (the captioned pic is a view of our street two weekends ago) causing general flooding (already a problem in our building’s sunken entryway) and battering down our lanky, sun deprived basil shoots (don’t worry, we pull them inside when it gets too crazy). But, as it was discovered last week, the rats are still here; only now they’re not inside B For Time Tea, but outside in the Cotton’s garden playing in the trees… all according to the expectations of our waiter. Enjoy brave guests!

There’s a pattern to entertaining guests: a dose of the city’s legitimate tourist spots (the bund, people’s square, yu yuan gardens, Cloud 9) interspersed with our own favorite experiential places (Dongbei restaurant, fabric market, Xiang Yang’s final day, World Cup at Freelance) and as many other classic China escapades as we can rustle up (the bike ferry, the subway, street eats, fish markets, and children peeing on sidewalks)

David’s in Beijing this weekend, another touriest adventure I haven’t checked off yet, but he’ll be back in town next week and our plan is to travel to Yangshuo for three days next weekend. Then he’s off to Thailand and we’ll be back to tottering around the large apartment and planning parties to fill the extra space. Actually, it will be nice to have a few solid weeks of relative quiet. It seems like we’ve been in continual travel or entertain mode for several months now.

I plan to spent the rest of today picking up my first foray into the world of (cheap) custom made clothing, contemplating the purchase of a second fan, gloating over the success of calling Dazhong taxi for a pick-up this morning (…Chinese baby steps) and, eventually, meeting the gang for Juliet’s farewell party (she’s off to Colombia U’s IR Masters program this fall).

Glad to be back online. Hope to have fun playing around with this site, more freedom than Friendster… at least now that I can access this website again anyway. H

Grandmere Qui Brille Partout

I don’t carry my camera around nearly enough these days, a bad habit to be fixed, but I do get around a fair bit and tonight’s Lantern Festival was one for the albums. Thanks to Flickr for the Beijing (?) based pic of tonight’s festivities.

The experience was noteworthy not because it was a dazzling display of romantic Chinese tradition, but because we paid RMB50 to leave the throngs of sparkler vendors and children pulling lit-from-within, rolling, plastic bunnies to join the crush of humanity squeezed into Yu Yuan Market, which was very much open for business hawking a more absurd than usual range of cheap, flashing baubles and where there was no “attraction” per se but rather 10,000 lanterns sponsored by Coca Cola, a floating mish mash of Disneyfied frogs and Aladdins, and a static parade of glowing dogs perched on top of an over-sized money pile.

While walking the Lantern beat, a blend of babies hammocked between jostled parents, couples attending to a lost tradition and passive wares flaunters (comme grandmere qui brille partout) Tongshi Mathieu relayed an apropos story of a colleague who recently asked how he would celebrate Valentine’s Day. When Mathieu explained his family didn’t tend to celebrate this holiday the coworker was at first shocked, but then came to ponder how a western Hallmark holiday had established itself as such a widespread (consumer) event in China. “Perhaps we are losing something” he said. I think perhaps they are.

Keep the volume down…

While waiting for our own evening’s resident photographer to share his proofs, I ripped these links right from Shanghaiist.com. They really are good.:

Movies!!
- http://www.danwashburn.com/movies/2006chinesenewyearshanghai.avi
- http://www.danwashburn.com/movies/2006chinesenewyearshanghai2.avi

Flickr Pics
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/danwashburn/sets/72057594055279913/with/92243244/
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanghaistreets/92108248/

P.S. Wednesday evening was even louder than Saturday. It’s really not nearly as fun as it would seem to be woken up by skull splitting explosions beneath your window every 45 minutes.

Year of the Dog

I’m not a ‘short format’ kind of guy. Maybe I need to work on that. :-O In any event, it doesn’t help my blogging habits. Half finished epic entries sit unposted on my desktop as my enthusiam and memory for the subject wanes. One way or another it seems obvious something has to change, and somehow I doubt it’s going to be the amount of time I get to devote to writing. (For now…) So we’ll give it whirl. Shorter, and hopefully sweeter.

One false inner mantra I’ve been able to effectively disprove here in China is that I only write when I’m emotionally inspired to do so. I mean, I do. But, thing is, I find myself emotionally charged and in awe of at least one dongxi per day, usually more… see entries November through for January for evidence of just how much inspriation does for my writing (hint: not much)

Anywho, there are a few events that truly set me lusting for a keyboard. One of them being Chinese New Year.

Killer party in an empty apartment aside (thanks Lauren S.!) the raw ludicrosity of Saturday night’s city-wide fireworks “display” was simply astonishing. The first firecrackers started ambushing Shanghai eardrums a few week ago. Here and there a shocking but isolated explosion in the middle of a crowded street, or subway station such to render the body’s sympathetic systems frazzled.

However, shortly after dusk on New Year’s Eve the real show started in earnest growing in phonic measure from the trampling of Zeus’ steeds to the amplified tectonic roar of colliding planets. This was no blitzkrieg, half-hour, Hudson River family event. This was seven hours of hours of increasingly frequent crack-crack-cracks, fizzzzles and B**MS; cardboard and spent mortar ricocheted off 10th story apartment windows. Hardly safer from our 40th floor rooftop vantage we took in the explosive 360 degree panorama and did our share of contributing to the fiery festivities. By 11:30 the city was shrouded in a sulfurous gun-smoke fog that stung the eyes and midnight struck with the confused, far flung violence of the dowager Tsu Hsi’s will. As far as the eye could see colored sparks engulfed every shikumen, da jie, nong and empty airspace. No window below 800 feet of altitude was safe for opening and as we watched lacy soot settled into the pile of the city’s collective wardrobe.

In many ways the scene, both a marvel and a treat, was the ultimate expression of humans enjoying the fruits and freedom of humanity. By God, we invented fireworks, so let’s all of us fire them off everywhere and anywhere we damn please, safety and sanity step aside for the wild moment please. There are so few places you can do this anymore.

Offshore Assets

So, I augmented my presence in the international banking scene yesterday by opening a second Chinese account. It’s not so much that one isn’t enough, it’s just that, well, I may have left my ICBC debit card in a gambling hall the other day (OK, the other week) and then may have gotten really ticked off at my bank for giving me the run around.

Yah, yah, not such a hot place to leave a card… no ‘aholic habits here though, the gambling hall is just the nearest cash machine on my corner (I swear…). Naturally, the staff had ‘no idea’ where my card went. And suddenly I give thanks for a 6-digit pin.

As for ICBC, largest bank in China or not, they’re awful. After visiting 4 different branches (over successive days) in search of a new card and getting the repeated explanation "we’re out of cards, come tomorrow" (ahem, bullsh…) I decided the solution was simply to open a new account with Bank of China. This I probably should have done from the beginning. So they only have 45 atm machines per square acre and not ICBC’s 478,000; they make up for it with an international presence and online banking (albeit in Chinese) that doesn’t require installing strange and suspiciously large software packages (PC only). Also, they actually keep spare cards lying around for customers like me. In the meantime, I can still draw down ICBC with my bar-coded savings booklet, a regional banking quirk that doesn’t quite fit into a wallet.

Opening a bank account in China is actually quite amusing. Firstly, it’s absurdly easy. Step 1, walk into account and present passport. Step 2, say any vaguely human sounding noise and they will immediately initiate account opening procedures. I’m guessing most foreigners don’t come to banks to conduct a multitude of complicated transactions. I’m also pretty sure I didn’t actually say anything to the teller, possibly I sneezed, before being presented with a bilingual sheet to fill in and then being prompted in digitized mandarin to enter my new password no less than 17 times… for varying reasons, in triplicate, plus a few for good measure. Then 4 more times to honor the gods and align my finances with current celestial happenings. Still, the whole shebang couldn’t have taken more than 7 minutes… after having waited in line for 25. A curious study in contrasting efficiency. And, to be sure, the kindly security guard peered over my shoulder inches from my head the entire time, fondled my backpack and ran mysterious paper errands with various documents, written in Chinese, that I had naturally signed without thinking twice about. I’ve probably just donated my living kidneys and spinal cartilage for raw consumption by superstitious Chinese athletes prior to important future Olympic events. I’ll make sure to text you all for help when if that happens.

P.S. Other regional service I’ve come to dislike: Malaysian Airlines

P.P.S. I’m fascinated by Hong Kong Money… it’s actually branded by individual banks. Feng-le Pianr!

P.P.P.S. Last night I ate hunk of wasabi the size of a baby’s fist. King Kong of babies. I absolutely do not recommend doing this. Jury’s still out on whether free dinner makes up for it. If my stomach doesn’t fall out by tomorrow, maybe yes.

No Child Left Behind

CNN Headline: Teacher accused of giving ‘liberal’ quiz
Friday, November 25, 2005 Posted: 1838 GMT (0238 HKT)
Bennington, VT

"… School Superintendent Wesley Knapp said he was taking the situation seriously.

"It’s absolutely unacceptable," Knapp said. "They (teachers) don’t have a license to hold forth on a particular standpoint."

Mmm, good standpoint Knapp. Wait, wait just one minute.

Ralph: Hi, Super Nintendo Chalmers!

Homer: Look everyone! Now that I’m a teacher I’ve sewn patches on my elbows.
Marge: Homer that’s supposed to be leather patches on a tweed jacket, not the other way around. You’ve ruined a perfectly good jacket.
Homer: Incorrect, Marge. Two perfectly good jackets!

China’s Gettin’ All Sophistimacated

Something’s going right when my corner Alldays, local equivalent of 7-11, staffed by 3 old crones is playing Sigur Rós (Starálfur to be precise) over their house system. Course, I think it was part of an advertisement.

I can’t tell if my tears are those of joy, or disapointment.