Wal-Mart in China

Today's mission was to find a PSP game store for Greyman. We had found a meager selection in a computer shopping mall in Xujiahui a couple of weeks ago but he clearly had hopes for something more substantial. First, we tried Shanghai's only Wal-Mart. It's not easy to get to. It's on the wrong side of the river, far from a subway, and in a residential area with nothing of interest in the neighborhood. The taxi ride was 40 rmb and the taxi driver had never heard of Wal-Mart.

This was the first two-story Wal-Mart I've ever been to. The groceries are on the first floor and the do-dads on the second. We were looking for the electronic do-dads section but when we found it there were no video game machines or games to be found. There were TVs, boom boxes, videos, etc - but no video games at all. It's the same way in all of the big department stores and retail stores in Shanghai. This is so odd that I am guessing there must be some regulation that prevents these stores from carrying video games. It's got to be some non-market reason - of which there are many in China.

I thought that the Wal-Mart here in China would, logically, be filled with cheap American goods. The ones in America are filled with cheap Chinese stuff afterall. But, much to my chagrin they also fill the ones in China with cheap Chinese goods. So we left and taxied back to downtown, had a pizza and continued our search in a computer mall near People's Park. There we hit pay dirt amid the chaos of the un-airconditioned three-story building packed with hawkers of everything from laptops to flashlights. We were offered cheap illegally-copied games but we bought the real stuff at a higher price. Mission accomplished.

To digress a bit - I once met with some of the Wal-Mart gnomes in Bentonville, Arkansas. They were having a problem sourcing American products for their overseas stores. Seems that foreigners going into a Wal-Mart store in, say - Europe, are expecting to find some American products inside. Problem was, Wal-Mart said they had a hard time finding American manufacturers that knew how to export. That may be true but I think the real problem was finding American manufacturers, period. It seems that a couple of decades of relentless Wal-Mart price pressures, combined with Wal-Mart's overseas sourcing, had already driven American manufacturers out of business. Wal-Mart was now reaping the rewards of their own greed.

Happy Birthday Mike!

Thank You for Your Disturbing

Got back to Shanghai yesterday after a pleasant four days on Guam. My sunscreen must have been out of date so I'll be remembering Guam for a few more days. Had to pass through Osaka again but the layover was just a couple of hours. As we were landing at Osaka's offshore airport the pilot suddenly aborted the landing and took back off. It looked like he had been trying to land on the terminal. He made a 25-minute loop and retried successfully. The Japanese pilot came on the PA system a few minutes after the missed landing and told us it was "because of a separation" and "thank you for your disturbing".

62 years ago today Guam was liberated from the Japanese and the people of Guam celebrated again this morning with a four hour long parade. I watched most of it from the grandstand but also walked most of the route with my hosts. This is a parade unlike any I've seen. Families stake out territory along the route days in advance. They pitch tents and set up a kitchen and dining room. On parade day they invite passersby into their encampment to share their food and hospitality. The parade is only an excuse to get together with family and friends.

The parade itself inches by - it's easy to outwalk the parade. Miles of car dealer trucks, civic group floats and waving politicians. People walk all over the place - including between the floats and alongside. It's hard to tell where the parade ends and the spectators start. If someone sees a friend in the parade they walk up to the float and visit - the parade stops until they finish. This is a laid back place.

The military is still here and their presence is growing. I saw a stealth bomber swoop over the bay yesterday. While a huge air force base occupies the north tip of this 37-mile long island a naval base occupies the southern tip. The military isn't very noticable though because the bases are secluded. The most noticable outsiders are the 1 million Japanese tourists that visit here every year.

East Coast of Guam 

Liberation Day on Guam 

Blue Water 

Mike's Cheesecake

The people of Guam are about the nicest people I've met. My hosts took me by K-Mart today to get some things I can't get in China and what I noticed was how polite everyone was. Several people who walked in front of me said "excuse me"& the employees smiled with genuine pleasure and thanked me for my business. I couldn't believe it. This sure isn't Shanghai!

We had dinner at Sam Choy's restaurant tonight and Peter, the chef, was better than Wolfgang. Our appetizer was a tasty wasabi cheesecake. He fixed grilled veggies for me. Dessert was banana fritters on a stick and we washed it down with apple tea.

I had about an hour in the afternoon between meetings so I rushed down to the sea for a swim. It was like swimming in an aquarium there were so many multi-colored fish. I saw a manta ray swooping around underwater like a giant graceful bird.

What a place!

The Philippine Sea from Guam 

On a Dot in the Pacific

I arrived in Guam this morning at 2 am. Getting here wasn't too easy - had to layover in Osaka for four hours and catch the Japan Airlines redeye to the island. It seems weird to be in the United States yet be so far away from the mainland. Can't see much at night but I noticed the welcome glow of a 24-hour K-Mart. Don't have those in Shanghai.

Also a real pleasure (in Japan and Guam) to see clean streets and people that line up and don't push their way in front of you. Everything smells clean - the restaurants, the shops - it's wonderful. And there's real, live, uncensored news and newspapers here!

With all this excitement I'm not sure if I can get to sleep.

Blue Taxis

I've been in Shanghai for six months and take taxis all the time. They aren't too bad. Some taxi drivers are very friendly and others are not at all friendly. I haven't run into a single one that was really rude to me - at least not while I was in the cab. Once you pay them and get out of the taxi and assume pedestrian status they'd just as soon run over you as all the other pedestrians they try to kill. Today I ran into the first couple of taxi drivers that blatently ripped me off.

I was showing some visitors around the Bund in downtown Shanghai and we split up to go in different directions - my son and I to Xujiahui and the visitors back to my house. I should have known better than to go with the two beat up blue taxis in line at the Bund but it was starting to rain. The drivers looked untrustworthy and turned out to be just that. Both had rigged meters. My visitors ended up paying nearly 80 rmb for a 35 rmb ride and I paid 43 for a 25 rmb ride. I wrote down my driver's driver number (# 229041) and will call in a report to the taxi complaint desk tomorrow. We'll see what that's like. My lesson though is to avoid the independent blue taxis and drivers that look like Johnny Depp.

July Snow

It snowed in Shanghai yesterday. It barely hit the warm Earth but there were a few minutes of tiny snowflakes moving from side to side on the wind outside my 6th floor patio at work. A couple of Chinese colleagues that were equally dumbstruck as we watched the phenomenon said that there was a saying in Chinese that snow in July means someone will be put to death. Oh that's a nice proverb I thought. But as common as the death penalty is in China it may be true. Just to be safe however, I was extra careful the rest of the day not to jaywalk.

No doubt the strange weather was due to a typhoon that struck south of Shanghai in Fujian Province. The temperature fell and the wind picked up but it was manageable. Typhoons do hit Shanghai but I have yet to see a direct hit on the city since I moved here.

It is rare that an old mystery is solved so it was with a certain delight that a three-year old mystery was solved today. In going through clothing I had shipped to Shanghai today we found a keychain that had disappeared three years ago - with all of my most important keys on it. It was in the pocket of a warm-up suit. Now if I just had all the things the keys fit!

Here's a little poem I wrote about life in Shanghai:



Rainy Morning

We have overslept and missed the courtesy shuttle!
Here, there, everywhere, rain
is heard splattering.

After a long clamor
of wind and rain, how many taxis
have passed us by?

Birthdays and otherwise

Greyman's ma ticked by the half-century mark today so we took her to that Shanghai / Sichuan restaurant that momllsenem tried while they were here. After that we had Italian icecream at the Carrfoure. The icecream cost almost as much as a table full of food at the restaurant. I've learned to ask for a "da bao" or "doggie bag" to take home. There's always too much food leftover.

Sad news to report. Greyman's dog, Tarongi, died last week. The people that were keeping him in Peavine let him out by accident and he got run over. He was 14 years old so he had a pretty long life. Still, Greyman and all of us are pretty sad.

Home on the Internet

In Peavine one of those unappreciated daily pleasures I enjoyed was waking up to NPR and the local public radio station. While repairing the previous day's bodily entropy I enjoyed listening to an in-depth discussion of what had gone on around the world while I slept. That's something I miss in China. You can't turn on the radio here and get real news - much less news in English. You can do that in Taiwan and Hong Kong but not in the PRC.

But thank heaven for the Internet! I can listen to NPR and even my local public radio station on my Internet connection here. While the Chinese government blocks many news sites and sources of information they tend to ignore the multitude of English language radio stations on the Internet. They pay much more attention to any news sites in Chinese. Tonight I'm listening to one of my favorite NPR programs - the Diane Rehm Show - a daily topical news interview program. It brings home right into my little office in Shanghai.

No to cannibalism!

China's movie nannies are hard at work protecting their people from controversy, loss of self-esteem and now cannibalism. The censors made Mission Impossible cut scenes showing laundry hanging from windows before they could show the film (filmed in Shanghai) in China. Now they've banned Pirates of the Caribbean 2 from China because it shows scenes of cannibalism. Wouldn't want to give the people here any ideas would we? In reality, the movie nannies here look for any possible excuse to keep foreign films out in order to protect the domestic movie industry. I don't think cannibalism is really a threat here - there's plenty of pork, fishy things, and duck's tongues. Why eat your neighbor?

Bookstores East and West

The plum rains continue in Shanghai - it was stop and go rain all day. Fortunately, it seemed to stop each time we needed to travel. We spent several hours in bookstores today but didn't find much. I bought a little book of Tang Dynasty poetry but the crowds were such that I could barely see the books much less buy any. I miss the comfortable and relatively uncrowded bookstores of America. To think of finding a chair or a cup of hot chocolate in a Chinese bookstore is, well - unthinkable.

Worms

Had the day off for July 4th so we took a bus tour to Suzhou to see the remains of the ancient city and, most importantly to Greyman, the "worms" at the silk factory. While he enjoyed seeing the silkworms munch away on mulberry leaves he was distraught to find out that they "cooked" the little fellows in their coccoons.

Amazing Race

The only "reality show" I've ever watched is the "Amazing Race" - a CBS production that features teams of Americans that race each other around the globe to win a million dollars. I enjoy the exotic locations and the culture clashes that occur. This week we met the producer of the show, Phil Keoghan, who came to speak to a few of us about the show and what goes on behind the scenes. Oddly enough, this show is more popular outside the US than inside. Greyman got his picture with Phil saying he was "philiminated".

US Navy in Shanghai

It was an odd sight, seeing the USS Blue Ridge parked in downtown Shanghai. The command ship of the US Navy's Seventh Fleet visited Shanghai for three days last week. The Passing Chinese boats plying the Huangpu River seemed perplexed by the sight of a huge warship flying an American flag. I'm not sure why the Chinese allowed this to happen but it gave me a chance to visit this ship for the second time. I attended a reception on the deck that featured guests from the Chinese navy mingling with hosts from the US Navy. What a sight.

I mentioned that this was the second time I'd been on board the Blue Ridge. First time was in Singapore when Governor Keating visited the ship when it visited that city state. That was in 1994. What struck me in 94 and again in 06 is to what extent the US Navy is involved in diplomacy and public affairs. Each time the ship calls at a port it is a highly organized affair with local dignataries and US expats included. At the reception last week I was amazed at how the Blue Ridge's crew threw a first-class diplomatic event. Among the crew's talents are a jazz band, a military band (that played the Chinese National Anthem), waiters and waitresses, first class food, and protocol specialists. The cake, which featured US and PRC flags, was the best cake I've had in years. All this talent was uniformed. These were waiters and waitresses capable of fighting a war. The Chinese Navy guests must have been impressed by the ship but by the looks on their faces I think they were most impressed by the multi-talented crew (and the food)!

Greyman got to go onboard as well. It was something he'll remember.