Saturday, May 27, 2006

One Flew Over the Bird's Nest Soup

I spent much of today in a Chinese mental hospital. No, the place hasn't gotten to me to that extent but I did have a "client" that required assistance. Getting people into hospitals here is no easy task. I used to complain about US hospital procedures but now I realize we are lucky in comparison. It took three hours to get him admitted. In the ward, the patients were all in the same worn-out PJs wandering around with nothing to do. I had to go buy him towels, soap, toothpaste and toothbrush because the hospitals don't supply those here. The moral of this story is don't come to China if you have a history of mental illness, have no family or friends here, and have no money or credit cards.

More happened today but I'm too tired to write about it right now.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Coasting and Censors

I catch the shuttle bus from the office about 5:30 pm everyday - except on the many days I have a reception or dinner to go to at night. The office is about a 25-minute drive from my home in the Shanghai burbs. When I'm able to come home on the shuttle bus we usually arrive just in time for the Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle on Star World TV network so I veg out for an hour before getting back to work on the computer. That one-hour break when I can turn off my brain and just coast is a pleasure.

The Da Vinci Code is showing in Shanghai for the past week and I hope to see it this weekend. I have not been to a movie in Shanghai yet but I'm told the movie is shown in English with Chinese subtitles.

Speaking of movies, part of Mission Impossible 3 was shot in Shanghai but the Chinese Government won't allow it to be shown here unless the producers cut out scenes they consider derogatory to China. For example, they want scenes showing laundry hanging out of windows cut. Never mind that this is a common sight in Shanghai. No doubt the censors will cut the car chase out and replace it with highlights of Chinese President Hu's address to the Communist Party Congress. Can't wait to see that one!
A Good Shanghai Blog

For those of you interested in life in Shanghai here is a good blog to read: http://home.wangjianshuo.com/ It is written by a Shanghai resident that used to be with Microsoft.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Add a Knob of Butter

I was trying to fix some chestnut and cranberry stuffing this weekend and ran into a measuring problem. The instructions on the box of Paxo stuffing mix from Britain said to "add a large knob of butter". I'm not sure if a "knob" is a standard unit of measurement in the U.K. but I couldn't find a "knob" listed on the side of my measuring cup. Did they mean the size of a doorknob or more like a dime-sized knob? As the British would do I just muddled through and it turned out ok.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Exotic Garage Sale

I went to a neighborhood garage sale this weekend that was organized by several foreign service families that were moving on to other places and needed to do some unloading. Given that these are people that move from exotic location to exotic location the garages were filled with unusual things from all over the world. I picked up a case of Japanese ramen, a bunch of bottles of Croatian olives stuffed with almonds, some chutney from England, mustard from France, framed textiles from Thailand, and salsa from America! Oh, and for a bit of culture, a DVD of Napolean Dynamite.

Today I went to Jingan Park across the street from Jingan Temple. This is a very commercial area of the city and I sat at a cafe in the park and studied. I paid a few cents to get into an area of the park called "Eight Treasures" which is a Chinese garden with recreations of eight famous relics or sites. All the original objects, a fort, a ancient tree, a well, a cave - all were recreations because all the originals have been destroyed. The well, called Bubbling Spring Well was famous throughout China but like so much else in China, was destroyed during the insanity of the Cultural Revolution between 1967-1976.

While I was waiting to get a haircut today I noticed the man seated next to me was playing games on a PDA - that's not unusual but what he was using as a stylus was. He had grown the nail of his little finger into a long thin "stylus" that he could use on his touch screen.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

From Suzhou to Sidewalks

I went to Suzhou today for a healthcare product seminar and at lunch found myself seated next to an American famous for being the center of a big White House (alleged) scandal a few years ago. I can't name names here but remind me to tell you next time I see you. He turned out to be a real nice fellow. On the way back to Shanghai our hosts took us by an old "water town" - a kind of mini-Venice with polluted waters. It has been preserved and looks pretty much like it did a couple of hundred years ago.

The drive to and from Suzhou was exciting. I'm used to driving methods in Asia but the expressways in China are really er...Exhilarating. There's nothing like weaving in and out of trucks, motorbikes, and cars at 90 mph - especially when half the people are on the wrong side of the road and the shoulder is used as an extra lane!

Ikea delivered a cabinet I bought for the bathroom today. Mommlls would like all the slide-out baskets in it. For $3 Ikea sent a guy that put the whole thing together for me. It took him two hours. It would have taken me all day.

I took a walk to the import food store tonight to pick up some basil to use in scrambled eggs and on the way I saw a man on a bike nearly decapitate himself on a clothesline strung across the sidewalk. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. Shanghaiers seem to use sidewalks for just about everything EXCEPT walking. Sidewalks are great places to hang your laundry, park your car or bike/motorbike, place a tree or fire hydrant (in the middle), give haircuts, or dig holes. Pedestrians have to walk in the street much of the time because the sidewalks are filled. In fact, it's often hard to discern a street from a sidewalk. Cars drive on the sidewalks and people walk in the streets. Go figure.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Ikea

I went to the huge Ikea store in Shanghai this week. I'd heard of the Swedish furniture maker but had never had a chance to see their stores in the US. They don't have any in Peavine. But what a concept! Beautifully-designed, modern, but inexpensive furniture and fixtures. Momlls would really like all the space organizing storage they build into their furniture.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

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The Temple Fair crowd Posted by Picasa
Acrobats at the Temple Fair Posted by Picasa
The Lighthouse that marks the confluence of the Huangpu and Yangtze Rivers. Posted by Picasa
Traffic Jam on the Huangpu Posted by Picasa
Dancing in the Streets

On Saturday I took a river boat down the Huangpu River to where it runs into the Yangtze River near the ocean. When they told me it was a three-hour tour I hesitated, but scanning the few people on the boat I didn't see anyone that even reminded me of the Skipper or Gilligan - so I got onboard. The Huangpu River near Shanghai is so industrialized and busy it is just like being on one of Shanghai's busiest streets. The ship drivers, I think they call them captains, drive just like the drivers on the streets do - with abandon. But when they are weaving back and forth, turning around in the middle of the river, and tailgating in 10,000 ton ships it's even scarier than the streets. And they were honking at each other just like the cars do - constantly. I saw several ships that had cargo stacked so high that there was no way the captain could see where he was going.

When we got to the Yangtze it was so wide I couldn't see the other side. There was a huge parking lot of ships waiting their turn to enter the Huangpu to go to Shanghai.

The Huangpu is so dirty and polluted it stinks. For three hours it smelled like I was stuck in a rancid latrine. I was feeling a little sick by the time we got back to Shanghai. The air wasn't any better. It was so smoggy you could only see the outlines of the skyscrapers on the opposite bank. The factories had been closed for several days for the holidays so on Saturday I guess they really cranked them up because what had been blue sky during the holidays turned gray, grimy and foul smelling on the weekend.

To top off the mood on the way from the dock to the bus station I had a nasty surprise. I was walking along in a daze looking at the sidewalk in front of me when I spotted a movement a couple of feet in front of me. It was a rat! Before I consciously even knew what it was my primal brain had me doing a jig on the streets of downtown Shanghai. It was weird - I was dancing before I knew what was going on. If you've read "Blink" you know what caused this auto response even before my conscious brain had time to compute. It was apparently impressive to the rat too because he watched me with some admiration I believe - judging by the look on his very large face. When the show was over he did his own jig up a hole in the building.

Friday, May 05, 2006

Time to Read

It's a drizzly night in Shanghai - but I like it. Gives me an excuse to stay home and read. I just finished "Finding George Orwell in Burma" and now I've started on the "Five-Foot Road" - written by an Australian that retraced an Australian preacher's journey through China in the 1880s.

I also put on my Gregorian Chant CDs - to drive the snoops crazy.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Corporate Misbehavior

I'm going to write my US Representative (fat lot of good it'll do - I know) and tell him I think corporations that let you order their service online should be required to let you cancel online. I had terrible trouble with AOL, Netzero, and several other "services" when it came time to cancel services. Emails go unanswered, ignored, and they provide no way to cancel online. Even when I called to cancel some companies (Netzero!) would take months and repeated calls to get around to stopping their automatic billing. Now, I can't get Vonage to cancel my Internet phone service. The ONLY way to cancel is to call a special phone number where you are told the wait is 30 minutes! Even at 4 cents a minute on Skype this is too long to be on a call from China. Corporations treat customers this way day in and day out - especially when it comes time to lose them. They obviously don't have a sense of ethical or moral behavior so why are they surprised when citizens have to ask Congress to mandate it?

Well, now that I got that off my chest - the weather in Shanghai is as pleasant as it can get. The past few days I've been perplexed why the sky was so clear and blue. I haven't seen this since coming to China. But a friend pointed out to me today that this is "Golden Week" when everyone had 3-5 days holiday and all the factories shut down. With the factories shut down the sky cleared!

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Chomping and Squishy

Day Two of the Labor Holiday. I got up late - about 10 am - and walked to the Moon River Diner for a big American breakfast and read the South China Morning Post. From there I took a taxi to the Longhua Temple in south Shanghai. They were having the Longhua Temple Fair and the neighborhood surrounding this old temple was packed. When I say packed I'm not kidding. I don't know how anyone could enjoy being jammed up so tightly. I felt like a canned sardine in gelatin. But while I usually hate crowds I found myself pushing and shoving through the crowd and almost enjoying it. People were chomping on skewers of meat and slurping Styrofoam bowls of noodles as they were jostled by the throng. [Tip: it's not a good idea to stick a skewer in your mouth when people are pushing and shoving.] Somewhere below, it was impossible to see one's feet, we were all stepping on something slimy and squishy - I hope it was discarded food and not some hapless fair-goer.

I finally made it to the temple, paid my 10 yuan and entered. Someone handed me some sticks of incense, and I was free of the crowd. There was no food for sale in the temple so there was plenty of room and I could walk around and enjoy the smell of incense and the fluttering flags.

After the temple I walked a bit to get away from the crowd and stumbled onto a large quiet park called the martyr's Mausoleum. This used to be Longhua Prison where the KMT imprisoned communists and "other patriots" in the early part of the 20th century.