The Chinese, perhaps surprisingly, are fascinated to the point of obsession by my love life. Or, really, my current lack thereof: they are consistently perplexed and disappointed by the fact that I am single. This feeling is focused primarily on my female colleagues, but it extends to males and non-work friends as well. The following conversation, which occured about ten minutes ago, is a good example of what I'm talking about:
Me: Hey Ellen, do you know if Chelsea is here today?
Ellen (a bit taken aback): Um...no I don't think so...why?
Me: Oh, just needed to talk to her about something, didn't see her at her desk.
Ellen (a bit concerned): Oh... I'm sorry. I don't think she's single anymore.
I shouldn't have to explain that I have no interest in Chelsea whatsoever, but I let me just say for the record's sake: I have no interest in Chelsea whatsoever. I needed to talk to her about work-related things (the gall of me, to expect to do that, you know, at work), and instead I receive unsolicited information about her relationship status. Earlier today, one of the office managers asked me if I would be taking anyone to the office holiday dinner (we're allowed one guest). When I said no, she emailed responded in Chinese something to the effect of "how pitiful. you're so lonely :( " (emoticon was in her email). A few weeks ago, I showed up to work in a blazer that one of my roommates had given me, and pretty much all of my female colleagues assumed (hoped, in fact) that I was going on a date after work.
Never has my lack of a girlfriend been such a defining characteristic of my personality, to the point where people assume that if I want to speak to someone, it must be with ulterior motives (or if it isn't, it damn well should be, because no self-respecting twenty-four year old man would be without a woman in his life). It's very clearly a cultural thing, and one that isn't necessarily restricted to Chinese. Vietnamese people that I met on my recent trip would ask me if I was married, often within ten seconds of meeting me. It's a part of one's life that seems far more important to peope in this part of the world than it does in the West, where staying single until your 30s is not only not frowned upon, but is often encouraged.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
The Hanoi Hilton
On October 26, 1967, John McCain's plane was shot down over Truc Bach lake in Hanoi. He ejected, and was captured in the middle of the lake after almost drowning. He was taken to Hoa Lo prison in downtown Hanoi, where he would live under well-documented brutal conditions for about five and a half years until his release in 1973.
The prison, christened sarcastically "The Hanoi Hilton" by its American captives during the war, has mostly been demolished and built over. The gatehouse to the prison still stands and has been turned into a museum for public view. I visited while I was in Hanoi, and was pretty blown away by what I found there.
Visually speaking, the museum isn't all too impressive. Since much of the original prison no longer exists, much of what you can actually see inside the museum are rather absurd-looking dioramas of prisoners in recreated cells. Perhaps the most jarring visual exhibit is a real-life guillotine, used by the French during their colonial rule of Vietnam, when the prison was used for Vietnamese political dissidents. But in general, you didn't really get a feel for the prison, or how it was when it was operational. This is understandable, since the prison itself no longer exists.
The museum's real power stems from its narrative, which is simultaneously fascinating and patently ridiculous. The first half of the museum deals with the prison's original use: by the French, on Vietnamese people. There is no shortage of condmenation of the French treatment of the Vietnamese during the colonial period. And much of this condemnation appears to be warranted -- if the museum is to be believed (and despite what comes next, I think this part probably should be), the conditions in the prison were brutal. Prisoners were kept shackled, by their feet, in square, stone cells, many of which were on an incline. They were therefore forced into the most uncomfortable of positions, which they had to endure for hours if not days on end. Of course, those were the lucky ones -- many were beaten, tortured, or killed (hence the guillotine). There are dioramas throughout this initial exhibit, many of them more absurd-looking than actually effective, that depict the conditions for the Vietnamese prisoners during French colonial rule.
There is nothing to suggest (and quite a lot of evidence proving otherwise) that such treatment did not carry over to the Vietnamese treatment of American POWs during the Vietnam War. And yet, that's exactly what the museum argues in the second half of the walkthrough: that American POWs were not only treated in line with the provisions of the Geneva Convention, but were offered quite comfortable lifestyles indeed. The museum's treatment of the prison during the Vietnam War is comical -- the dioramas disappear, and in their place are trinkets like cigarettes and playing cards, blatantly on display to suggest that what American POWs experienced at Hoa Lo was nothing more than controlled leisure. There is a video on display, obviously coerced, with prisoners sporting bandages, bloody faces, and black eyes, similing together as they prepare a Christmas feast in prison. One sign goes so far as to argue that the quality of life for American POWs at Hoa Lo was, by every measure, better than that of Vietnamese living in Hanoi. You would think, from the narrative at the museum, that the nickname Hanoi Hilton was not sarcastic at all.
Perhaps none of this is surprising. Vietnam is still a palpably communist country, considerably more so than China is, and propaganda is one of the government's most effective weapons. But the Hoa Lo exhibition is stark evidence, almost satirically so, that museums inherently have politics. Every curating decision is made with an agenda. I would just like to assume that for most museums, at least one prong of that agenda is objectivity. Even museums like Yad Vashem in Jerusalem or the Newseum in Washington, which deal with topics so wrought with politics and emotion, do so with the promise that facts reign supreme over all. Perhaps I'm spoiled by the terrific museums I went to as a child, but I really do think a museum ought to be this way. Not so at Hoa Lo.
The prison, christened sarcastically "The Hanoi Hilton" by its American captives during the war, has mostly been demolished and built over. The gatehouse to the prison still stands and has been turned into a museum for public view. I visited while I was in Hanoi, and was pretty blown away by what I found there.
Visually speaking, the museum isn't all too impressive. Since much of the original prison no longer exists, much of what you can actually see inside the museum are rather absurd-looking dioramas of prisoners in recreated cells. Perhaps the most jarring visual exhibit is a real-life guillotine, used by the French during their colonial rule of Vietnam, when the prison was used for Vietnamese political dissidents. But in general, you didn't really get a feel for the prison, or how it was when it was operational. This is understandable, since the prison itself no longer exists.
The museum's real power stems from its narrative, which is simultaneously fascinating and patently ridiculous. The first half of the museum deals with the prison's original use: by the French, on Vietnamese people. There is no shortage of condmenation of the French treatment of the Vietnamese during the colonial period. And much of this condemnation appears to be warranted -- if the museum is to be believed (and despite what comes next, I think this part probably should be), the conditions in the prison were brutal. Prisoners were kept shackled, by their feet, in square, stone cells, many of which were on an incline. They were therefore forced into the most uncomfortable of positions, which they had to endure for hours if not days on end. Of course, those were the lucky ones -- many were beaten, tortured, or killed (hence the guillotine). There are dioramas throughout this initial exhibit, many of them more absurd-looking than actually effective, that depict the conditions for the Vietnamese prisoners during French colonial rule.
There is nothing to suggest (and quite a lot of evidence proving otherwise) that such treatment did not carry over to the Vietnamese treatment of American POWs during the Vietnam War. And yet, that's exactly what the museum argues in the second half of the walkthrough: that American POWs were not only treated in line with the provisions of the Geneva Convention, but were offered quite comfortable lifestyles indeed. The museum's treatment of the prison during the Vietnam War is comical -- the dioramas disappear, and in their place are trinkets like cigarettes and playing cards, blatantly on display to suggest that what American POWs experienced at Hoa Lo was nothing more than controlled leisure. There is a video on display, obviously coerced, with prisoners sporting bandages, bloody faces, and black eyes, similing together as they prepare a Christmas feast in prison. One sign goes so far as to argue that the quality of life for American POWs at Hoa Lo was, by every measure, better than that of Vietnamese living in Hanoi. You would think, from the narrative at the museum, that the nickname Hanoi Hilton was not sarcastic at all.
Perhaps none of this is surprising. Vietnam is still a palpably communist country, considerably more so than China is, and propaganda is one of the government's most effective weapons. But the Hoa Lo exhibition is stark evidence, almost satirically so, that museums inherently have politics. Every curating decision is made with an agenda. I would just like to assume that for most museums, at least one prong of that agenda is objectivity. Even museums like Yad Vashem in Jerusalem or the Newseum in Washington, which deal with topics so wrought with politics and emotion, do so with the promise that facts reign supreme over all. Perhaps I'm spoiled by the terrific museums I went to as a child, but I really do think a museum ought to be this way. Not so at Hoa Lo.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Halong Bay
After spending three nights in Hanoi with my friend Sam, I ventured outside the capital to Halong Bay. Recently pegged by UNESCO as one of the seven modern wonders of the world, Halong Bay is located about 100 miles east of Hanoi in the Gulf of Tonkin. There are countless tours that bus eager tourists from around the world to the bay -- most of these tours involve an overnight on a boat, as was the one I ultimately decided to do. It was a fun trip, with friendly fellow travelers, lots of good but highly Westernized and heavy Vietnamese food on the boat, and lots of picturesque sightseeing. As luck would have it, about 8 Chinese people traveling together were on my trip. I didn't let on for a while that I spoke Mandarin. This proved useful when they started making fun of our Vietnamese staffers. Ultimately, however, I invited one of them in Chinese to sit next to me on the boat. Everyone was very surprised and impressed.
Halong Bay is home to over a thousand islands, many of them just rock formations that jut jaggedly out of the sea in terrific shapes and angles. It's a beautiful place, one of the more stunning that I've ever been, and I'm very glad I got to see it when I did. This is because I'm not particularly confident that it will survive for more than ten or so more years. If the physical majesty of the bay was the major takeaway from my overnight, a close second would be the glaring environmental concerns posed by all of the human contact the bay has to endure. Hundreds of ships carrying thousands of visitors sail into the same small circle of water every day. It is a huge boon for the Vietnamese economy that relies on tourism, but one can't help but notice the damage it causes as well. The water is visibly tinged with oil, the smell and sound of boats dominate, and there is little to no wildlife to speak of. My trip ended at around noon, and within fifteen minutes they had another group filing onto the boat that my group had just vacated. It's a well oiled machine (no pun intended) -- groups are constantly on the bay, to the potential detriment of the bay itself.
So if you have the chance to get to Vietnam, go to Halong Bay. You might not be able to for much longer!
I wasn't able to capture the crowds very effectively, but this is the entrance to the harbor in Halong City. Zounds of people mill around until their tour leaders tell them that their boat is ready, at which point they are ushered through the crowds to the docks.
The little houses are used by fishermen and kayaks, which we got to paddle. Two of the Chinese people who had never kayaked before capsized their boat and fell in. I tried (and failed) not to laugh.
We visited an enormous cave in one of the rock formation islands. They had installed funky colored lights throughout the cave, for which I was thankful since we wouldn't have been able to see otherwise. But for some reason, the lights coupled with the flash made the cave almost impossible to capture effectively on film. Looking at this and my other cave photos now, I have trouble visualizing how the cave actually looked. This is the first (and smallest) of three chambers. It was really much more impressive than this picture makes it seem.
Stalactites. Or stalagmites? I recall from somewhere that stalaCtites are the ones that hang down, cause they're on the Ceiling, and stalaGmites jut up cause they're on the Ground, but what do I know.
The bay (and a small fraction of the boats) from the mouth of the cave.
The highlight for most people at Halong Bay is the sunset. It's certainly what I was looking forward to most. As far as sunsets go, I think I've seen more impressive colors elsewhere (Montana and Cape Cod both come to mind). But you'd be hard pressed to beat the setting. These two were taken on top of a steep mountain on a beach island, which we climbed up to catch the sunset. Not shown here are the dozens of people jostling for position as everyone tries to snap the perfect sunset photo. It was pretty funny, actually. Very few people had any time to just enjoy the sunset -- they were all too worried about getting that postcard photo.
This one was taken from our boat, and is probably my favorite picture from the trip. As Sam quipped when I got back to Hanoi and proudly showed her this picture, "Everyone becomes an amazing photographer at Halong Bay."
We had a cooking class on board the boat before dinner. And by "class" I mean our Vietnamese tour guide showed us how to make spring rolls, had us each try once, and then just made more of them herself for us to eat. My spring roll fell apart, naturally.
A view of the bay the next morning, which was cloudy and rainy (good timing, since we basically just cruised around and ate both breakfast and lunch, until it was time to get off the boat).
And I made some friends! From left to right, we have Udo and Sara, a German couple, and Patrizia, an attorney from Switzerland.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
A Shanghai Thanksgiving
Thousands of miles away, on the other side of the world, belts are bursting and tryptophan is just starting to catalyze the telltale food coma of a good turkey dinner. Football is on television, family and friends are home for the long weekend, and everything is as it should be for one of the favorite American holidays of the year. It's Thanksgiving night in America.
There are those who simply live for Thanksgiving. They gather their nuclear and extended families in force for huge cookouts in the backyard, preceeded by friendly (or not-so-friendly) touch football games, and succeeded by watching the pros do it on television. They cook and cook (and cook), and put more effort into the production and joy of Thanksgiving than any other day of the year. And while I completely understand why, I am not one of those people. I love Thanksgiving, but I'm not sure I would have ever classified myself as one of those people for whom a calendar year is simply the fourth Thursday of November...and 364 days that aren't Thanksgiving. For me, it's always been about two things: my family (we tended to keep things small: Mom, Dad, Noah, and the grandparents), and more recently, my tight circle of friends, for whom Thanksgiving represented perhaps the only time of year when we would all descend back on New York City at the same time.
It's simpler than that, though. I realize now that the value of Thanksgiving can be described in one word: home. This marks the first Thanksgiving in my twenty-five years of life that I have not spent at home. This is also true for many of my newly made American friends in Shanghai. And even for the grizzled veterans, who have been abroad for several years, it seems the idea of Thanksgiving away from home never becomes normal.
Rather than wallow in the homesickness that naturally comes with spending Thanksgiving in Shanghai, 30 expats got together for a potluck Thanksgiving supper last night. I was very lucky to be one of them. It was hosted by four teacher colleagues of my roommate Franco, all of whom I had met several times before and would, at this point, count them as my own friends too. You could tell from the slightly detached look in most of the guests' eyes that everyone was missing home at least a little bit. So we focused instead on each other, and, of course, on food: there was turkey, and gravy, and several varieites of stuffing, sweet carrots, and pasta salad, macaroni and cheese, and fried mac n cheese balls (made by me and Franco), sweet potato mash, all sorts of delicious desserts, and more. One girl pointed out that the food last night was miles better than anything her family ever made at Thanksgiving. (Mom -- I can confidently say the same was NOT true for me, so don't get your knickers in a twist).
After eating our fill, the hosts called everyone into their spacious living room. They graciously thanked all of us for coming, and asked that we go around the room and say briefly what we were thankful for. The responses were heartfelt, honest, and open. Some of them hilarious and some of them moving, almost all of them were driven by love. That love manifested itself in an outpouring of appreciation for our friends in Shanghai, many of whom were sitting together in that living room last night, but it also extended away, in myriad directions, to the Thanksgiving dinners everyone knew they were missing. Everyone, it seemed, felt they were exactly where they needed to be last night, while simultaneously wishing they could also be at home with their families. It was powerful and it was real, and perhaps one of the more memorable Thanksgivings of my life despite not spending it with the people I love the most. On a cold, rainy night in Shanghai, 30 people who chose to leave home created, together, a temporary home, and gave thanks for the collective fortune that allowed us to do so.
****
I promise there's still more coming from the Vietnam trip; I just haven't had time to sort through the pictures. This weekend, for sure.
There are those who simply live for Thanksgiving. They gather their nuclear and extended families in force for huge cookouts in the backyard, preceeded by friendly (or not-so-friendly) touch football games, and succeeded by watching the pros do it on television. They cook and cook (and cook), and put more effort into the production and joy of Thanksgiving than any other day of the year. And while I completely understand why, I am not one of those people. I love Thanksgiving, but I'm not sure I would have ever classified myself as one of those people for whom a calendar year is simply the fourth Thursday of November...and 364 days that aren't Thanksgiving. For me, it's always been about two things: my family (we tended to keep things small: Mom, Dad, Noah, and the grandparents), and more recently, my tight circle of friends, for whom Thanksgiving represented perhaps the only time of year when we would all descend back on New York City at the same time.
It's simpler than that, though. I realize now that the value of Thanksgiving can be described in one word: home. This marks the first Thanksgiving in my twenty-five years of life that I have not spent at home. This is also true for many of my newly made American friends in Shanghai. And even for the grizzled veterans, who have been abroad for several years, it seems the idea of Thanksgiving away from home never becomes normal.
Rather than wallow in the homesickness that naturally comes with spending Thanksgiving in Shanghai, 30 expats got together for a potluck Thanksgiving supper last night. I was very lucky to be one of them. It was hosted by four teacher colleagues of my roommate Franco, all of whom I had met several times before and would, at this point, count them as my own friends too. You could tell from the slightly detached look in most of the guests' eyes that everyone was missing home at least a little bit. So we focused instead on each other, and, of course, on food: there was turkey, and gravy, and several varieites of stuffing, sweet carrots, and pasta salad, macaroni and cheese, and fried mac n cheese balls (made by me and Franco), sweet potato mash, all sorts of delicious desserts, and more. One girl pointed out that the food last night was miles better than anything her family ever made at Thanksgiving. (Mom -- I can confidently say the same was NOT true for me, so don't get your knickers in a twist).
After eating our fill, the hosts called everyone into their spacious living room. They graciously thanked all of us for coming, and asked that we go around the room and say briefly what we were thankful for. The responses were heartfelt, honest, and open. Some of them hilarious and some of them moving, almost all of them were driven by love. That love manifested itself in an outpouring of appreciation for our friends in Shanghai, many of whom were sitting together in that living room last night, but it also extended away, in myriad directions, to the Thanksgiving dinners everyone knew they were missing. Everyone, it seemed, felt they were exactly where they needed to be last night, while simultaneously wishing they could also be at home with their families. It was powerful and it was real, and perhaps one of the more memorable Thanksgivings of my life despite not spending it with the people I love the most. On a cold, rainy night in Shanghai, 30 people who chose to leave home created, together, a temporary home, and gave thanks for the collective fortune that allowed us to do so.
****
I promise there's still more coming from the Vietnam trip; I just haven't had time to sort through the pictures. This weekend, for sure.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Vietnam: Hanoi Highlights
Well, it's been a while. Happy Thanksgiving to the folks back home. It's certainly a bit weird to be waking up this morning and have it just be another working Thursday. Needless say I miss home, friends, family -- a running theme of this blog, to be sure -- but I've been getting much busier of late (to the unfortunate detriment of the frequency of my blog posts). And I think this is precisely the right time to be getting busier.
I've been to Vietnam and back since I last posted -- my first trip abroad since moving to China -- and it was, in a word, great. That's it for curbing my prolix tendencies, though; there's just too much to write about my trip to Hanoi and Halong Bay, and too many pictures to share to fit into one post. So the next few posts, hopefully with greater frequency than they have been in recent weeks, will be about Vietnam: from Hanoi, to Halong Bay, to the food, to the Hanoi Hilton, to the people, to the language, and more. If moving to China was primarily about immersing myself in a language and culture that intrigued me so much, then the ability to travel to faraway places that aren't so faraway to China was a close secondary reason.
So we'll start simple, with just a few highlights, in no order in particular, from walking the streets of Hanoi, the capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam:
Beer drinkers pay heed: the Vietnamese drink beer. I wouldn't go so far as to say they drink a lot, but they do like their beer, and specifically this kind of beer: Bia Hoi. Bia Hoi, which literally means "gas beer" in Vietnamese, is a government-owned brewing company that provides daily batches of light lager to many local establishments around town. The beer is not brewed to keep -- the restaurants that serve the beer, which are also called Bia Hois, get fresh batches every morning, sell the beer until it's finished, and then rinse (I wouldn't be surprised if many skipped the rinsing step) and repeat the next day. A beer costs anywhere from 25 cents to 40 cents US. This will become a running theme: Vietnam is cheap.
This architectural oddity is known simply as the One Pillar Pagoda. It was built over a millenium ago to a Buddhist Bodhisattva, and was destroyed by the French in 1954 after their colonial presence in the country was terminated. It has since been rebuilt, and has become one of the go-to sites for tourists.
You all know this guy: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He stands prominently in the middle of a park (that is referred to simply as Lenin Park) on a main Hanoi drag. I met a Latvian family who was eagerly taking pictures of themselves in front of the statue -- vestiges of former Soviet Union pride, I suppose. They were somewhat surprised when they asked me whether I knew who this was and I said yes.
This is just one of many examples of the very palpable presence of communism in Vietnam. The streets of Shanghai, glittered with the gold advertisements of international merchandisers, seems positively cosmopolitan and capitalist compared to Hanoi, which has very little in terms of commercial ads. In their stead, they have standard communism signage calling for the prolonged life of the state, family harmony, and the like. They also have a neighborhood watch, which comes around every morning and makes announcements, presumably promoting the same sort of ideals. These announcements happen here too, but far more rarely.
This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip. This street houses real people -- and real trains. The track is live; in fact, it's the main artery into Hanoi Train Station. Train traffic is low by Western or Chinese standards, but the residents of this drag must take cover whenever a train rumbles by.
Hong Kiem Lake -- the unofficial center of Hanoi. It is situated in the center of the Old Quarter, a tight, compact neighborhood full of windy streets, street peddlers, backpacker hostels, bars, and restaurants. Hanoi is full of lakes, and is sometimes referred to as the "city of lakes." This one is the most famous, probably because of its cultural significance. As the story goes, an emperor was boating on this lake when a turtle rose from the waters and snatched his sword. The turtle dove back down into the depths, sword clutched between its teeth, and all of the emperor's search and rescue efforts failed to recover either turtle or sword. The emperor decided that the turtle represented a messenger from the gods, who had granted him the sword to assist him in rebellion against the Chinese Ming Dynasty. They were now reclaiming the heavenly sword. The emperor erected a shrine to the turtle god, which now sits on an island in the center of the lake. Turtles are quite revered in Vietnam, both because of this story and due to their representation of longevity.
On my first day in Hanoi, an old lady carrying this thing stopped and tried to sell me some bananas. I hesitated -- I was hungry, and wanted a banana -- and she proceeded to put the bar on my shoulder and offer to take a picture of me. Cool, I thought, a goofy picture to remember the trip. Then, of course, she refused to let me go without buying not 1, but a whole bunch of bananas. When I told her I only wanted to pay for one, she started hitting me, saying "I take picture, you pay! I take picture, you pay!" This is, as they say, the oldest trick in the book. Fruit peddlers use their devices to lure unsuspecting tourists into taking a picture, after which they guilt them into paying for the picture -- and a lot of fruit.
Nothing like a good old haircut in the park in Hanoi. I was told by one of the roommates of the friend with whom I stayed while there, that this barely scrapes the surface of what you can see done on the street. His most bizarre sighting: dental surgery.
This is Truc Bach Lake, another of the three lakes I walked around during my exploration of Hanoi. This one has significance to Americans: it is the site where John McCain's plane crashed after being shot down in 1967.
This is West Lake, the granddaddy of Hanoi's many lakes. Its shoreline winds around the lake for 17 kilometers (about 10 miles), making it Hanoi's largest lake by far. This guy is in the lake, fishing. In the 10 minutes I sat by the lake, I saw three separate successful fishing missions. The water seemed to glow a bit, with either sewage or radiation or something bad, so I'm not sure how I feel about those fish.
This is the presidential palace. Yeah, it's yellow.
After beloved leader Ho Chi Minh's death, his body was embalmed and preserved for viewing here, at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. I'm told that every year, Ho takes a trip to Russia where his body undergoes formaldehyde treatment to help keep him "fresh." It's supposed to be quite eerie, seeing him chilling there, a la Jeremy Bentham at LSE. Alas, one of the (only) tragedies of my trip was that the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum was closed for viewing during the time I was free to see it.
More to come! Happy Thanksgiving to all -- you are missed in Shanghai :)
Monday, November 12, 2012
The Expat Web
It didn't take more than a couple of weeks in Shanghai for me to realize that the expat scene here is not only pervasive, but also incredibly overlapping. Every expat "event" I go to -- be it a music event, or that chili cook-off, or the beer festival, or what have you -- in addition to seeing the people I expect to see, I invariably see other people I either know or recognize. Put simply, expats, like the Mighty Ducks, fly together, and random connections abound.
Here's a good example:
A few weeks ago, I met Franco at a birthday party at a rooftop bar (great view of the French Concession). Franco knew the birthday girl, Sasha, through a mutual friend. Lo and behold, about five minutes after I got there, I ran into Pamela (Franco and my Chilean roommate). She too was there for Sasha's birthday, and neither Franco nor I had any idea she was there. You'll forgive me for not remembering exactly how Pamela and Sasha are connected. Suffice it to say, both Franco and Pamela knew Sasha, through different means, and now I do too, meaning that Sasha is now connected to 75% of my random, Craigslist-formed apartment.
On Saturday, I went to dinner with Sasha and a few of her friends, some of whom I had met before. We went to Chu Hua, a really yummy sushi place that keeps on serving you until you can't eat any more (or, in our case, they kick you out). At one point, I ate a piece of fish that tasted acutely familiar, but it took several more pieces of fish for me to realize what it was: Herring. I've loved herring for over a decade -- it's one of my favorite Jew-foods -- and I'm pretty sure I've never had it without either cream sauce or pickled in vinegar. I've certainly never had herring with soy sauce and wasabi. It's certainly not my favorite piece of sushi, but it was fun stumbling upon an old favorite in an entirely different context.
Anyway, a few hours later, I saw that I had received an e-mail from Zev, a guy I went to high school with, and with whom I 've keep in very loose contact since we graduated 6 years ago. Zev and his girlfriend have just embarked on 14-month backpacking trip around the world, and their first stop is China. I think I must've just stumbled upon their plan on Facebook (ahh the glories of technology), and e-mailed Zev to tell him I was in Shanghai and that I'd be happy to show them around if they were coming here while in China. We've exchanged a few emails figuring out when they'll be here, and it turns out they'll likely overlap with Thanksgiving, a particularly nostalgic holiday for Americans abroad, or so I'm told. Zev's email last night said that he and his girlfriend thought it could be fun to gather a few wistful Americans together for a Thanksgiving dinner, and that he was planning on asking his friend Sasha if they might use her apartment as a venue in exchange for a home-cooked Thanksgiving meal (Zev and his girlfriend are apparently avid amateur cooks).
Surely, I thought, it couldn't be the same Sasha.
It is.
They went to camp together 15 years ago.
I always hated that Disney World ride, but damn, it's a small freaking world.
***
It's been a while since I've posted some good pictures, so I'll take this opportunity to share the scene at Fuxing Park on Sunday afternoon, where we celebrated Pamela's birthday by having a picnic. Just to bring things full circle...Sasha was in attendance.
I saw this store on my way back from the park and had to take a picture, for reasons that will be clear to several of this blog's readers.
P.S. That statue? Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, of course! Workers of the world, unite!
Here's a good example:
A few weeks ago, I met Franco at a birthday party at a rooftop bar (great view of the French Concession). Franco knew the birthday girl, Sasha, through a mutual friend. Lo and behold, about five minutes after I got there, I ran into Pamela (Franco and my Chilean roommate). She too was there for Sasha's birthday, and neither Franco nor I had any idea she was there. You'll forgive me for not remembering exactly how Pamela and Sasha are connected. Suffice it to say, both Franco and Pamela knew Sasha, through different means, and now I do too, meaning that Sasha is now connected to 75% of my random, Craigslist-formed apartment.
On Saturday, I went to dinner with Sasha and a few of her friends, some of whom I had met before. We went to Chu Hua, a really yummy sushi place that keeps on serving you until you can't eat any more (or, in our case, they kick you out). At one point, I ate a piece of fish that tasted acutely familiar, but it took several more pieces of fish for me to realize what it was: Herring. I've loved herring for over a decade -- it's one of my favorite Jew-foods -- and I'm pretty sure I've never had it without either cream sauce or pickled in vinegar. I've certainly never had herring with soy sauce and wasabi. It's certainly not my favorite piece of sushi, but it was fun stumbling upon an old favorite in an entirely different context.
Anyway, a few hours later, I saw that I had received an e-mail from Zev, a guy I went to high school with, and with whom I 've keep in very loose contact since we graduated 6 years ago. Zev and his girlfriend have just embarked on 14-month backpacking trip around the world, and their first stop is China. I think I must've just stumbled upon their plan on Facebook (ahh the glories of technology), and e-mailed Zev to tell him I was in Shanghai and that I'd be happy to show them around if they were coming here while in China. We've exchanged a few emails figuring out when they'll be here, and it turns out they'll likely overlap with Thanksgiving, a particularly nostalgic holiday for Americans abroad, or so I'm told. Zev's email last night said that he and his girlfriend thought it could be fun to gather a few wistful Americans together for a Thanksgiving dinner, and that he was planning on asking his friend Sasha if they might use her apartment as a venue in exchange for a home-cooked Thanksgiving meal (Zev and his girlfriend are apparently avid amateur cooks).
Surely, I thought, it couldn't be the same Sasha.
It is.
They went to camp together 15 years ago.
I always hated that Disney World ride, but damn, it's a small freaking world.
***
It's been a while since I've posted some good pictures, so I'll take this opportunity to share the scene at Fuxing Park on Sunday afternoon, where we celebrated Pamela's birthday by having a picnic. Just to bring things full circle...Sasha was in attendance.
Action shot of Pam's friend Natalia.
Any guesses as to who these two proud looking gentlemen are? Answer below...
From left to right: Ignacio, Natalia, Daniella, and Pam
I saw this store on my way back from the park and had to take a picture, for reasons that will be clear to several of this blog's readers.
P.S. That statue? Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, of course! Workers of the world, unite!
Thursday, November 8, 2012
A Short Day's Journey Into Night
Assume, for the sake of argument, that we did away with daylight savings time in the US. And then, for good measure, we just eradicated time zones in general. It'd certainly make things simpler, right? You wouldn't have to account for time change when planning phone calls, flight connections, television programming -- many scheduling difficulties we accept as part of living in a country of such longitudinal girth would be rectified. So why don't we do it? Well, obviously, because it makes no astronomical sense. Without time zones, the day would look a hell of a lot different in California than it would in New York. The sun would rise and set in California not just three hours later in an absolute sense, but in a time sense as well.
As counterintuitive as this may sound, this is how it is here in China. With only one time zone, it is currently 5:06 PM at the offices of J.D. Power in Shanghai, and it is also 5:06 PM in Lhasa, Tibet, some 4,200 kilometers west of here. The result: it got dark at about 3:45 this afternoon. By Christmas, I imagine that I'll be saying goodnight to the sun at around 3. Of course, the reverse is true as well -- the sun rises at around 5am or before here. In order to make a single time zone of such expansive width functional at all, the concept of a "day" in which sunlight and waking hours are at least somewhat closely aligned doesn't really exist in Shanghai, at least not as we approach the winter equinox. I imagine the same is true for Tibet and Xinjiang in June, where the sun probably doesn't set until close to midnight. All of this is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, particularly considering there are industrialized countries out there like Sweeden that function on close to 24 hours of sunlight during the summer and darkness in the winter. But, man, is it disconcerting to look out the window before 4pm and have it be night time already.
I heard a funny explanation of this phenomenon the other night After complaining about it, someone said to me, "Trust the Chinese government to mandate at least nominal, Communist equality in everything -- even time." The notion that two Chinese people could be experiencing different times of day at the same time is, I suppose, anathema to the ultimate notion of "One China." It reminds me of my trip to the Shanghai Aquarium 4 years ago, when, upon asking the ticket agent if there was a student discount for the preposterously expensive tickets, I was told in Chinese that, "In China, everyone is equal."
Whatever the reason is, Yogi Berra must've been thinking of China when he announced, "It gets late early out here."
As counterintuitive as this may sound, this is how it is here in China. With only one time zone, it is currently 5:06 PM at the offices of J.D. Power in Shanghai, and it is also 5:06 PM in Lhasa, Tibet, some 4,200 kilometers west of here. The result: it got dark at about 3:45 this afternoon. By Christmas, I imagine that I'll be saying goodnight to the sun at around 3. Of course, the reverse is true as well -- the sun rises at around 5am or before here. In order to make a single time zone of such expansive width functional at all, the concept of a "day" in which sunlight and waking hours are at least somewhat closely aligned doesn't really exist in Shanghai, at least not as we approach the winter equinox. I imagine the same is true for Tibet and Xinjiang in June, where the sun probably doesn't set until close to midnight. All of this is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, particularly considering there are industrialized countries out there like Sweeden that function on close to 24 hours of sunlight during the summer and darkness in the winter. But, man, is it disconcerting to look out the window before 4pm and have it be night time already.
I heard a funny explanation of this phenomenon the other night After complaining about it, someone said to me, "Trust the Chinese government to mandate at least nominal, Communist equality in everything -- even time." The notion that two Chinese people could be experiencing different times of day at the same time is, I suppose, anathema to the ultimate notion of "One China." It reminds me of my trip to the Shanghai Aquarium 4 years ago, when, upon asking the ticket agent if there was a student discount for the preposterously expensive tickets, I was told in Chinese that, "In China, everyone is equal."
Whatever the reason is, Yogi Berra must've been thinking of China when he announced, "It gets late early out here."
Monday, November 5, 2012
Ode to Democracy
Diaspora has been a major theme of this blog -- it's perhaps my grown-up way of reframing good old-fashioned homesickness in an analytical way -- but November 6 was always going to be a day when my heart and mind where about as far away from Shanghai as they could be. Thanks to daylight savings, and the now thirteen hour time difference between me and the east coast, only a few hours of my November 6th will overlap with the polls actually being open in the US (with the exception of Dixville Notch, of course). But that doesn't mean that doesn't take away from the sense of long-distance patriotism felt today, November 6th, Election Day, 2012 in Shanghai.
I think everyone reading this blog knows who I want to win the election, and who I think will win the election. So I don't really want to spend much time prognosticating -- in a few short hours, we'll all know what happens anyway. About a year ago, I felt pretty good about the election, and I can't say I feel any less confident now.
That said, I've always thought that Election Day should be a celebration of something other than Democrat vs. Republican, or right vs. left. We've got 1,459 other days every four years to argue about the relative merits of tax plans, defense budgets, moral imperatives and, of course, social security. On this one day, can't we just be proud that all of this is left up to us to decide in the first place?
The refrain of the past few years has been "Washington is broken." It's hard not to agree with that. There's a lot that needs fixing, and it's not clear to me that either of the two candidates are individually capable of doing that fixing. There is, to be sure, much to descry about the state of American politics. But I, for one, like to take stock of the many and serious issues that plague our system, and thank my lucky stars to have those be the problems that populate our list of grievances.
For more than two centuries, every four years, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, the leader of the United States government is systematically and peacefully overthrown by the people. Read that sentence out loud, and then go get a map of the world and try to find the other countries for which that is true now, and for which that has been true for so long. I need not look farther than across my desk, at my Chinese colleagues, to find individuals who have never had a hand in the people who constitute government of their People's Republic. To be an American is to have a voice -- regardless of who they support, Americans ought to be on top of soap boxes on Election Days, using those voices as early and as often as possible, screaming at the top of their lungs, just because they can.
Much has been said about how this election will come down to a very small sliver of the electorate -- primarily those who live in Ohio, Virginia, Florida, New Hampshire, and Colorado. I worry that such a sentiment, nevertheless true, will discourage some in the other 45 states from voting. Last I checked, the US had a voting rate of about 50%. I find that somewhat disheartening, as I look outside my office window on Shanghai, a city of 23 million people who have never voted in their lives. I certainly do not have a perfect record -- I didn't vote in either of the two elections I lived through in Washington D.C. (of all places), though this was primarily because I didn't want to register for a D.C. Driver's License (a very lame excuse indeed). One shouldn't vote because they can single-handedly affect who becomes President. It's for the down-ticket elections, on which they certainly can have an impact, and, more importantly, to vote is to celebrate one's ability to do so.
So vote, people. Early and often. And for whatever it's worth, this is what you'll be contributing to -- you heard it here:
Obama: 303
Romney: 235
I think everyone reading this blog knows who I want to win the election, and who I think will win the election. So I don't really want to spend much time prognosticating -- in a few short hours, we'll all know what happens anyway. About a year ago, I felt pretty good about the election, and I can't say I feel any less confident now.
That said, I've always thought that Election Day should be a celebration of something other than Democrat vs. Republican, or right vs. left. We've got 1,459 other days every four years to argue about the relative merits of tax plans, defense budgets, moral imperatives and, of course, social security. On this one day, can't we just be proud that all of this is left up to us to decide in the first place?
The refrain of the past few years has been "Washington is broken." It's hard not to agree with that. There's a lot that needs fixing, and it's not clear to me that either of the two candidates are individually capable of doing that fixing. There is, to be sure, much to descry about the state of American politics. But I, for one, like to take stock of the many and serious issues that plague our system, and thank my lucky stars to have those be the problems that populate our list of grievances.
For more than two centuries, every four years, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, the leader of the United States government is systematically and peacefully overthrown by the people. Read that sentence out loud, and then go get a map of the world and try to find the other countries for which that is true now, and for which that has been true for so long. I need not look farther than across my desk, at my Chinese colleagues, to find individuals who have never had a hand in the people who constitute government of their People's Republic. To be an American is to have a voice -- regardless of who they support, Americans ought to be on top of soap boxes on Election Days, using those voices as early and as often as possible, screaming at the top of their lungs, just because they can.
Much has been said about how this election will come down to a very small sliver of the electorate -- primarily those who live in Ohio, Virginia, Florida, New Hampshire, and Colorado. I worry that such a sentiment, nevertheless true, will discourage some in the other 45 states from voting. Last I checked, the US had a voting rate of about 50%. I find that somewhat disheartening, as I look outside my office window on Shanghai, a city of 23 million people who have never voted in their lives. I certainly do not have a perfect record -- I didn't vote in either of the two elections I lived through in Washington D.C. (of all places), though this was primarily because I didn't want to register for a D.C. Driver's License (a very lame excuse indeed). One shouldn't vote because they can single-handedly affect who becomes President. It's for the down-ticket elections, on which they certainly can have an impact, and, more importantly, to vote is to celebrate one's ability to do so.
So vote, people. Early and often. And for whatever it's worth, this is what you'll be contributing to -- you heard it here:
Obama: 303
Romney: 235
Saturday, November 3, 2012
The One Child Policy
On several occasions over the past two months, I have made the cultural blunder of asking a Chinese person whether they have any siblings, or otherwise assuming that to have multiple children in a household was not just possible, but perfectly normal. The most recent instance of this occurred on Friday, when I was told by a colleague that another colleague wasn't at work because his wife had given birth to their son. "That's terrific," I exclaimed. "Is it their first child?"
My question was met with a look of confusion more than anything else, but it didn't take long for someone to say "Well, yes," and then continue, somewhat pedantically, "you see, you can only have one child in China." I stammered some sort of apology ("Oops! I forgot about that!"), as I have done previously when making this mistake, and the conversation moved on from there with no lingering awkwardness.
Part of me must have assumed that, along with China's growth and increasingly open economic market, so too came some form of loosening of the harsh human rights restrictions for which China has become notorious in the past 60 years. Deep down, I suppose I knew this wasn't the case -- the government is frequently chided by its Western business partners, including the US, for its turning blind eyes to the human rights situation here. Before coming here, I associated the one-child policy with sinister consequences, like the horrible stories of family planning, where Chinese couples would abandon baby girls because they had hoped for a son. Given only one shot at the proverbial apple, people would elect for "do-overs," and leave unwanted daughters to fates at which I can only guess. Such stories seem too awful to exist in such an industrialized, "first-world" country in 2012, so I suppose the naive part of me assumed they didn't.
Given that it does exist, and appears to be enforced rigorously, Chinese sentiment towards the policy (or at least my perception of such sentiment) strikes me as fairly fascinating. First, nobody seems troubled by it. It's just a given that families will only have one kid, the same way the notion of free speech is a given to Americans. I suppose that is easily explained by either a status quo argument (they haven't experienced any other reality, so how could they question the policy) or a brainwashing argument (the government, as it is notorious of doing, has convinced them that this is "right").
But here's where it starts getting weird. An expat friend of mine (who shall remain identity-less for the sake of privacy) recently went through a pregnancy scare with the Chinese girl whom he was dating. The relationship wasn't serious at all yet, but these things happen. Before the pregnancy had even been medically confirmed, however, they had the tricky conversation about what they would want to do about the potential child. She declared that she wanted to keep the baby and raise it, no matter what, and that abortion was not an option for her. Now, this clearly opens up issues of abortion which are very complicated and sensitive. I certainly don't mean to thrust my pro-choice values onto this Chinese woman. I don't have a sense for how the Chinese community feels about abortion, but if this particular case is any barometer, it may not be too popular. But. If people would go so far as to abandon daughters for the sake of having sons, I would assume that they would at least consider alternatives to having your only child as mandated by the policy with a foreigner who a) you don't know very well and b) likely won't be around for very long to raise the kid with you. But from what I could tell, she viewed the potential pregnancy as a responsibility, if not a blessing, as if she had it with her Chinese husband, and was prepared to carry it to term.
As it turns out, she wasn't pregnant. While I sympathize with any disappointment she might feel, I view this as a good thing, for everyone involved, including the non-existent child. My friend, incidentally, agrees. There are clearly wide gulfs between American and Chinese cultures -- it is precisely because of those gaps that I chose to come here. When I experience them, however, like this one surrounding family and children, I can't help but feeling both insensitive and confused. I guess that's just part of the ride.
My question was met with a look of confusion more than anything else, but it didn't take long for someone to say "Well, yes," and then continue, somewhat pedantically, "you see, you can only have one child in China." I stammered some sort of apology ("Oops! I forgot about that!"), as I have done previously when making this mistake, and the conversation moved on from there with no lingering awkwardness.
Part of me must have assumed that, along with China's growth and increasingly open economic market, so too came some form of loosening of the harsh human rights restrictions for which China has become notorious in the past 60 years. Deep down, I suppose I knew this wasn't the case -- the government is frequently chided by its Western business partners, including the US, for its turning blind eyes to the human rights situation here. Before coming here, I associated the one-child policy with sinister consequences, like the horrible stories of family planning, where Chinese couples would abandon baby girls because they had hoped for a son. Given only one shot at the proverbial apple, people would elect for "do-overs," and leave unwanted daughters to fates at which I can only guess. Such stories seem too awful to exist in such an industrialized, "first-world" country in 2012, so I suppose the naive part of me assumed they didn't.
Given that it does exist, and appears to be enforced rigorously, Chinese sentiment towards the policy (or at least my perception of such sentiment) strikes me as fairly fascinating. First, nobody seems troubled by it. It's just a given that families will only have one kid, the same way the notion of free speech is a given to Americans. I suppose that is easily explained by either a status quo argument (they haven't experienced any other reality, so how could they question the policy) or a brainwashing argument (the government, as it is notorious of doing, has convinced them that this is "right").
But here's where it starts getting weird. An expat friend of mine (who shall remain identity-less for the sake of privacy) recently went through a pregnancy scare with the Chinese girl whom he was dating. The relationship wasn't serious at all yet, but these things happen. Before the pregnancy had even been medically confirmed, however, they had the tricky conversation about what they would want to do about the potential child. She declared that she wanted to keep the baby and raise it, no matter what, and that abortion was not an option for her. Now, this clearly opens up issues of abortion which are very complicated and sensitive. I certainly don't mean to thrust my pro-choice values onto this Chinese woman. I don't have a sense for how the Chinese community feels about abortion, but if this particular case is any barometer, it may not be too popular. But. If people would go so far as to abandon daughters for the sake of having sons, I would assume that they would at least consider alternatives to having your only child as mandated by the policy with a foreigner who a) you don't know very well and b) likely won't be around for very long to raise the kid with you. But from what I could tell, she viewed the potential pregnancy as a responsibility, if not a blessing, as if she had it with her Chinese husband, and was prepared to carry it to term.
As it turns out, she wasn't pregnant. While I sympathize with any disappointment she might feel, I view this as a good thing, for everyone involved, including the non-existent child. My friend, incidentally, agrees. There are clearly wide gulfs between American and Chinese cultures -- it is precisely because of those gaps that I chose to come here. When I experience them, however, like this one surrounding family and children, I can't help but feeling both insensitive and confused. I guess that's just part of the ride.
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