School of No Fault

Any of my loyal readers that have been in Shanghai will know just what foolishness this Shanghai Daily guest editorial is. The writer seems to be of the school of expatriates that believe that cultural differences excuse any behavior - even if it is life-threatening behavior. China has one of the world's highest traffic death tolls per capita.

Out-of-Body at KFC

Yesterday we stopped in a KFC to get some cold drinks and I had an out-of-body experience. I'm so used to the crowds, the noise and the pushing of Shanghai that I don't even notice it much anymore. But this time, as I was standing in the midst of the mass of shouting customers on one side of the barricade (er, service counter) and the phalanx of shouting order-takers on the other side I suddenly had a view of the chaos from a vantage point above. The sound disappeared but I could see the two opposing sides arrayed as if in battle - the red-uniformed professionals on one side and the rag-tag but energized barbarians on the other side. I was about to place a bet on the barbarians when...

the scene morphed into the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the height of a crisis sell-off. People were shouting orders and waving documents as if their lives depended on it. Sweat dripped from screaming lips, elbows swung wildly, money was tossed across counters. Then, I was brought rudely back to reality by one of the shouting lieutenants on the other side. She was screaming something about drinks. "你要...."

Can You Spare a Yuan?

Beggars and panhandlers are a common sight in Shanghai and surrounding cities. One finds them on the subways, near retail doorways, on stairs in underground walkways, everywhere. Some are aggressive while others just sleep sprawled in passageways with a bowl next to their head to receive coins. This is not the China the authorities want outsiders to see - especially in relatively rich Shanghai. But there's just too many beggars for the authorities to deal with.

Foreigners are a favorite target of the beggars because they know foreigners tend to be soft-hearted and/or gullible. It's hard for us to discern between the needy and the opportunistic. Is the lady displaying her sickly baby really a mother in need or is she abusing the baby cruelly in a fraudulent scheme designed to tug at heart strings? Is the man begging for coins on the subway really in need or is this just an easy way to make money? It is so hard to know. While one wants to help those who need help one also doesn't want to reward those who are frauds - the social parasites that take money that would otherwise go to the truly needy.

Each Sunday the International Community Church on Hengshan Road has a number of very aggressive panhandlers posted around the perimeter. They target the charitable Christians coming and going from church. I see the same ones there every week. The mother who points out prospects to her small daughters who are launched like heat-seeking missiles toward the target. Once the coins are in hand the children call back to the mother "I got it!" If the coins aren't forthcoming the child gets a scolding from the mother (?). Then there's the pushy middle-aged lady that hounds foreigners mercilessly for a block. She's always there.

One thing I've noticed is that the beggars or panhandlers are never found hanging around outside the Communist Party offices around the city.

Momllsenim sent me the following news story from the Peavine Gazette:

A couple called police to their home in the 3300 block of East Willy Street just before 6 PM Thursday. They told officers a man broke in, then accidentally shot himself. The man has been identified as Paul O'Tool.

The residents were surprised at what happened. Deloris Feloris: "And he went to shoot the gun at Neff and somehow the burglar stumbled and fell on his own gun and killed his and happened to die. You know just killed his self, you know not self suicide, but just one of those freak accidents."
The couple in the home was not hurt, but was taken in for questioning.

Inside that house it must have been a real battle of wits. I think that the scientists will find that once the third stupid person entered the house it somehow sucked the intelligence out of the space inside - distorting the space-time continuum, altering the laws of physics inside the house thus causing the robber to aim at himself and lose his footing. Just a theory.

G-Man's Goes to School

The G-man started school on Thursday. He says he thinks it will be ok. I asked him why. "They serve salmon in the cafe", he said.

When we went to orientation on Wednesday the first thing I noticed was the campus was larger than all but one of the universities I attended. My school didn't have guards with berets either.

West Lake Weeping Willow 

Puality? 

 

Man With Head Swims in Yangzi

A man swimming in the Yangzi River recently was "shocked" to find a fellow swimmer swimming without his head. Having been on a couple of boat trips on the filthy Yangzi River recently the most shocking aspect of this story is that a man with a head was swimming in the river.

Trivia is Important, sometimes.

I won a Chinese trivia contest recently and received some tickets to a performance by Shunza at the Shangri-La Hotel this last weekend. Her performance was fantastic and the seats couldn't have been better - front row center. What was the question I answered? Name the winner of last year's Chinese Supergirl contest and what she is well known for. Can you guess the correct answer?

Pushing My Buttons

Two months ago I bought two Midea electric fans at Carrefour and have used them off and on this summer. I thought I was pretty careful with them, I didn't toss them about, leave them in the rain or use them as battering rams. I was even careful to warn them when I was about to turn them on. Still, they both have stopped working well before their expected retirement age. One just hums without turning its blades and the other's "on" switch stopped switching on. On top of this, the Advantez' table lamp I bought at Carrefour just a month ago has also decided it doesn't want its switch to function either. To get the bulb to light I have to toggle the loose "on" button back and forth until it finds just the right position - and then it will stay on for a minute or two before switching off.

China makes an awful lot of electronic appliances - it's about all you can find at the stores in the US anymore. What I'm finding is that all the good stuff is exported and the rejects get left behind in China to torment consumers here.

After the Storm 

Guam Storm 

FEMA's Dream

Typhoon Saomai, said to be the strongest storm to hit the China coast in 40 years, is just south of Shanghai in Zhejiang province but it's still a clear sky in the city. Surprisingly, the storm is not expected to affect Shanghai at all. CNN Weather says it should be raining (it's not) and other weather services say it is clear and 93 F (which it is). The full moon is crisp and bright in a clear night sky - something I thought I wouldn't be seeing in Shanghai. From January to June Shanghai's sky was grey and polluted nearly every day.

One odd thing about typhoons and China is the relative lack of news coverage about the storm damage. Stories about the storms are very limited when compared with US news coverage. Unlike the US, the Chinese Anderson Coopers don't rush down to the beach in their rain slickers and shout into the microphone as 70 mph winds slap them around. You certainly won't see the media here criticizing the government for its fumbled responses to storms. There could be 10,000 people stranded in a soccer stadium in Wenzhou but no one outside the stadium will know about it.

The government here is so worried about social unrest that they recently issued a decree that prohibits the media from talking about developing news until the government tells them it's ok. That should make the TV news here even more exciting.

Crying Waitresses

In Shanghai restaurants it is common for waiters and waitresses to have to pay for food if they get an order wrong. I had seen this happen once before but it happened at lunch again today. My Chinese-American friend ordered a dish and the waitress misunderstood and delivered the wrong dish. When my friend refused it she reluctantly took it away but came back a few minutes later pouting that she had to pay for the dish if we didn't. My friend politely explained that it wasn't his fault she didn't pay attention and refused. When she came back to deliver the correct dish she was crying - which put a damper on the meal to say the least. To pay for a 40 rmb dish would just about wipe out her day's income. Feeling sorry for her we bought the dish for take-away but we didn't appreciate being placed in such a position by the waitress or the management. The result of this short-sighted Shanghai management policy is that waitresses will fight with customers and try to refuse to take incorrect orders back. The result is even poorer service.

Thinking Bad Thoughts

I finally have the Internet again after several days of no connectivity. I'm not sure what caused the problems - whether it was my computer, the house connection or the censors - but as soon as I stopped thinking bad thoughts it came back on.

Since I didn't have the Internet we took an overnight trip to Hangzhou and West Lake. Greyman enjoyed the two-hour train ride (his first) as much as the destination.

Round vs Rectangle

I finally got around to going to the optical shop at Carrefour to get a pair of eyeglasses for use at the computer. Momllsenem brought me my eyeglass prescriptions when she visited in June. I'm tired of peeking over my regular eyeglasses at the computer and getting a crick in my neck. I had made a stab at finding some glasses last month but I didn't like the styles that I saw - no rimless or oval lenses to be found. It was the same this time. Here was an optical shop with literally hundreds of styles and not a single one of them were my favorite oval shape. Almost every pair of frames were small, rectangular jobs.

I asked the saleslady if they had some oval frames hidden away somewhere. She chortled pitiably as she explained to me that rectangular is the style now - round is out. It was almost as if she was embarrassed for me - me standing there in my old - hideously outdated oval-lensed glasses. She turned away...to allow me privacy for my shame. I gave in and bought a pair of rectangular frames. Blue ones. The tyranny of the optician fashionistas.

Tracking Storms

The sky has been clear for over a week. At night, for the first time this year, is so clear at night that one can see some of the brightest stars and the clean edges of the moon. Is it the heat that has cleaned up Shanghai's air? It has been miserably hot most days in July and I'm told by long-time residents to expect about six more weeks of it. I'll have to take their word for it because the weather reports in China seem to be wildly inaccurate.

Even the international weather sites, like Yahoo Weather and the Weather Channel, are nearly useless when trying to figure out what to expect in Shanghai. In Peavine USA I could look at the online weather report from the local TV stations and see a radar image so detailed that I could easily track a storm approaching my section of the metropolis. If ones searches for a radar image of Shanghai you'd be lucky to find a map that covered an area smaller than the Asia/Pacific. In the USA you can track clouds. In Shanghai you can track typhoons.